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CHARLES H. GRASTY 



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CHARLES H. GRASTY 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 



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Copyright, 1918, by 
The Centuby Co. 



Copyright. 1918, by 
Thi New Tom Times CoMyiiit 



Published, May, 1918 



MAY 24 1918 
©CI.A4S9115 



CONTENTS 

VAQt 

Message from General Pershing ..... ix 
Introduction xi 

CHAPTEB 

I Exit Asquith: Enter Lloyd George . . 3 

II President Wilson's Proposals: Europe's 

Reception of Peace Without Victory . 10 

III A Lincoln-Day Message to America from 

the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George . . 27 

IV Glimpses at the Front 31 

V The Flight from Berlin Home with Ge- 
rard 51 

VI American Men of the War .... 63 

VII French Men of the War 77 

VTII The British Men of the War .... 105 

IX To Europe with Pershing 143 

X Our Army in France 153 

XI The Agony of France 168 

XII In Switzerland 179 

XIII A Corner of Alsace Reconquered . . . 222 

XIV To the Rescue of Italy 241 

XV Great Britain at Bay 255 

XVI The Nivelle Offensive 283 

XVII In Conclusion 297 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Charles H. Grastj Frontispiece 

PACING PAGE 

Crossing the Channel 48 

British Troops Disembarking at a French Port . 49 
Arrival of General Pershing at Boulogne-Sur-Mer . 49 

The Fo'c'sle of a British Battleship 128 

A British Battleship Taking in Oil Fuel at Sea . .129 

The Town Hall at Peronne 160 

At Bapaume 161 

Inconnu , 192 

A Soldier's Cemetery 193 

British Tanks 224 

With the British Troops in France — A Night Picket 225 

Shipbuilding on the Clyde 260 

A Shipyard on the Clyde 261 

A British Battleship at Night 292 

Captain Guynemer 293 

The illustrations to this book are lent to The Century Co., by the British 
Government. 



MESSAGE FROM 
GENERAL PERSHING 

This great war is teaching new things every day. 
War on such a scale affords unprecedented oppor- 
tunity for originaHty. While methods change, 
human character remains, and other things being 
equal, character will decide the last battle. 

This war found us as a nation nakedly unpre- 
pared, but our people had the stamina, the moral 
sense, the instinct for the light and the right. It is 
a fine thing to us soldiers in the service to look 
toward home and see a mighty people responding 
to the call of idealism, turning nobly toward duty 
in the splendid spirit expressed in the phrase the 
"utmost for the highest." We may make mistakes 
here and there in this detail or in that, but we have 
the practical mind, and with each new experience 
we shall move to a higher level of excellence. 

Of the human material that America is sending 
to this war I can speak with exactness. It is the 
best, and with enough of such material there can 
be no doubt of America's showing. I have always 
had only one opinion of American soldiers, and that 
opinion has been more than confirmed in France. 
Given the opportunity, the American Army in 



X MESSAGE FROM GEN. PERSHING 

France will fulfill the best that has been expected 
of it. 

The history of this war cannot be written without 
the perspective that time alone can give. In the 
meanwhile such chronicles as the author has 
presented supply the public with current infor- 
mation and preserve a useful record for the his- 
torian. The exceptional opportunities of observa- 
tion enjoyed by the author will make this volume 
one of the best among contemporary publications 
on the war. 



INTRODUCTION 

[I asked my friend Mr. Colvin, who is a master craftsman 
in editorial, or "leader,' writing, and whose pen, as all who 
read the "Morning Post" know, is incapable of dullness, to 
make an introduction for despatches that through the generous 
courtesy of the "New York Times" and the venturesome en- 
terprise of the Century Company are here published in book 
form. I hardly hoped for an essay in his best vein presenting 
his favorite doctrines for the serious consideration of America. 
But he has evidently seized the occasion to challenge a school 
of politico-economic thought in America the ideas of which 
were very largely drawn from the British policy upon which 
Mr. Colvin makes so spirited an attack. To that school of 
tariff reform — a term that means in America precisely the 
opposite of what it does in England — I myself belong. While 
I disagree with much that Mr. Colvin says on this head, I am 
glad to afford him a medium through which he may present a 
group of contentions constituting a protest that is likely to 
shake, if not to cl^nge, the existing economic order at the close 
of the war. The standpoint which Mr. Colvin has chosen ap- 
peals almost irresistibly to the conservative temperament, as 



xii INTRODUCTION 

we have seen in America, where the protective system has long 
stood against attack. My good friend will find himself in 
higlily respectable company in the United States. — C. H. G.] 

Two years or so before you Americans entered 
this great war, my good friend Mr. Grasty used 
to drop into my office. It was at a time when 
American life seemed pretty cheap, and I 'm afraid 
we used to chaff Mr. Grasty about the dollar value 
of American citizenship. "What are American 
lives worth to-day?" we would say, and we re- 
marked that American honor was like American 
oil: it was no doubt clear and bright, but with a 
high flash-point. Mr. Grasty took it all in very 
good part. Although American citizens were hav- 
ing rather a rough time in Europe in those days 
he was always cheerful, always smiling, and always 
confident. "That 's all right," he would say; "my 
countrj'- is all right. We will come in in our own 
time. Let them pile it up." A phrase that he 
used stuck in my memorjT "The President is try- 
ing to get into the war with a united country behind 
him. He will break with Germany when he can 
do no otherwise." 

Well, Mr. Grasty turned out to be a good prophet 
on his own country. He never wavered in his faith 
that his countiy would vindicate the honor of its 
sovereignty. He believed in the Allied cause and 
he believed that his fellow-citizens believed in it. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

He knew that his President understood the interest 
and honor of America and the issues at stake in 
the war. And the fact that in all these things he 
turned out to be right is to me at least, a sufficient 
recommendation for this book. 

Now that he has asked me to write an intro- 
duction to his little volume of Day-by-Day De- 
spatches, I think it only right to do my best to 
"put you wise," as Mr. Grasty would say, on the 
war as we see it over here. There has been a good 
deal too much flattery and a good deal too much 
rhetoric, too many resounding phrases, too many 
plausible catchwords in the declarations and mani- 
festos of the Allies. I am not one of those who 
believe that the war is merely a vindication of the 
rights of small nations or that its object is to make 
the world safe for democracy, or that it is going 
to end war, or that it is going to lead to a league of 
nations in which the Prussian wolf will lie down 
contented and happy on equal terms with the Bel- 
gian lamb. All these phrases may have their value 
for what you in America, I believe, call "spell- 
binding," but they are confusing and irritating to 
a plain man. Much better get right down to the 
bed-rock of facts! 

And the bed-rock, as we now see it over here, 
is that the Allied nations are fighting for their 
existence. In the nineteenth century Germany 
had made herself so strong by war and by industrial 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

and economic organization that it seemed possible 
to her to conquer and possess the whole world. 
It was not a new idea with the German people; 
on the contrary, it was an idea so old that almost 
everybody except the Germans had forgotten all 
about it. But let us remember that the Germans 
are great students of history, and that the Ger- 
man idea of history is that Germany succeeded to 
the Holy Roman Empire. The Germans sacked 
Rome and set the imperial crown on the German 
brow. The Germans maintained that crown for 
many centuries. All through the Middle Ages the 
German princes struggled for the honor of being 
elected not kings of Germany, but kings of Rome. 
When they were elected kings of Rome by their 
own people they made their triumphal march over 
the Alps and were crowned emperors by the pope. 
If the pope ever quarreled with this arrangement, 
they carried fire and sword into the plains of 
Lombardy and threatened Rome itself. The pope 
was sometimes a prisoner of the emperor, and the 
papal policy was often dictated by the imperial 
diet. 

It is interesting, also, to remember that this 
political supremacy of what we might call "Ger- 
mandom," had its economic side. Does the Ameri- 
can public, which, I am told, reads history a good 
deal, realize that all through the Middle Ages the 
German merchants governed the commerce of 



INTRODUCTION xv 

Europe? The Hanseatic League is now only a 
vague name ; yet at one time it exercised a real and 
absolute sway from Iceland to Venice, from 
Novgorod to London. And what was the Han- 
seatic League? It called itself "The Society of 
German Merchants of the Holy Roman Empire." 
The imperial eagle was quartered on its coat of 
arms: it was represented in the imperial diet, and 
its motto was a motto of world power: "Mein 
Feld ist die Welt," my field is the world. 

It was an organization of some seventy German 
cities ; Liibeck the chief, and after Liibeck, Dantzic, 
Hamburg, Cologne, which founded its power on the 
monopoly of the shipping materials of the Baltic, 
and the Russian trade. No ships could be built in 
northern Europe without the maritime stores which 
came from ports and territories controlled by the 
Hanseatic League. If the King of England 
wanted a fleet, he had to buy it from Liibeck, and 
English policy was dictated by those who ruled the 
sea. There was a time when the Hanseatic League 
virtually governed England. The extent of its 
power is shown by the privileges it possessed. The 
Germans had in theii keeping one of the gates of 
London. They had fortified wharves on the 
Thames, and fortified warehouses known to medi- 
eval England as the Steelyard. They had the right 
to import and export goods on a special tariff not 
only lower than the tariff paid by all other foreign- 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

ers, but lower than the tariff paid by Englishmen 
themselves. They were free from internal tax- 
ation, and they were superior to English law. 
They had their own courts to try causes between 
them and the natives of England. As they con- 
trolled all the metals, including silver, then the cur- 
rency of Europe, the kings of England were usu- 
ally in their debt, and we know that the borrower 
is the servant of the lender. They used this su- 
premacj^ to dictate the policy of England, and when 
their demands became too extortionate, they block- 
aded English ports and stopped English commerce. 
England at that time was a poor country exporting 
only wool and a rough, undressed cloth to Flanders. 
This foreign commerce was almost entirely in the 
hands of German merchants. There is in existence 
a letter from a representative of the Hanseatic 
League in London "to the Worshipful Senate of 
Liibeck," in which he speaks quite truly of the realm 
of England as "under the thumb of the Hanseatic 
towns." 

How England freed herself from this German 
domination would be a long story, and it would 
take me beyond the scope of this introduction. I 
should have to tell how English merchants organ- 
ized themselves on national lines, and how they 
established relations with Russia by way of Arch- 
angel, and how they sent out their little ships to 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

explore Newfoundland and Virginia for timber and 
turpentine and other naval stores. 

You may read part of the story in Hakluyt's 
"Voyages." Thus, for example. Captain Christo- 
pher Carlile in his "briefs and summary discourse 
upon the intended voyage to the hithermost parts 
of America," which he wrote in April, 1583, gives 
as one of his reasons why the voyage should be 
made: 

The badde dealings of the Easterlings [that is, Hanseatics] 
are sufficiently known to be such towards our merchants of 
that trade [the trade with Russia and the Baltic] as they 
do not only offer them many injuries over long to bee written; 
but doe seek all the meanes they can, to deprive them wholly 
of their occupying that way: and to the same purpose have 
of late cleane debarred them their accustomed and ancient 
privileges in all their great townes.^ 

I should also have to tell how the Hanseatic 
League provided the Spanish Armada with ship's 
tackling and munitions of war in order to defeat 
the national policy of Queen Elizabeth, and reduce 
England to her old position of economic servitude 
to the German Empire ; and how our English mer- 
chants helped Queen Elizabeth and our English 
Navy to defeat that great conspiracy. German 
sea power had grown great by a monopoly of the 
Baltic; English sea power grew great by adventur- 

iHakluyfs "Voyages" (1904 edition). Vol. VIII, p. 135. 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

ing to Newfoundland and Virginia; and in the end 
the Atlantic defeated the North Sea, or as it used 
to be called, the German Ocean. 

Thus the birth of America is directly connected 
with this old and forgotten struggle between Ger- 
man and English commerce. The power and 
wealth drawn from the West broke the Hanseatic 
domination, and Germany went down in the revolu- 
tion and ruin of the Thirty Years' War. For two 
centuries Germany hardly counted as a great power. 
"Germany," said Bismarck in the middle of the 
nineteenth century, "is only now recovering from 
the Thirty Years' War." And Friedrich List, 
whose writings are well known in America, wrote 
about 1840 of Germany as a country completely 
under the commercial domination of England. 
But Germany had not forgotten her history. She 
had not forgotten her old motto "Mein Feld ist die 
Welt." She had not forgotten that she had once 
ruled England, and that England had broken her 
ancient power. And she had not forgotten that 
the strength of the Anglo-Saxon race lay as much 
in America as in England. It would be too long 
a business to trace step by step the rebirth and 
growth of the German Empire, After all, it is 
a story well enough known. Wars with Denmark, 
with Austria, and with France reestablished the 
power of the German sword. The Zollverein and 
the organization of great metal and electrical indus- 



INTRODUCTION xix 

tries created a new Hanseatie League far more 
powerful than the old. He who is master of steel 
is master of the world if he knows how to use it; 
and Germany, who knew how to use it, before the 
war produced more steel than England, France, 
and Russia put together. It was not, taking their 
history and position into account, so unreasonable 
for the German to suppose that they might again 
live up to the old Hanseatie motto, "Mein Feld ist 
die Weltr 

It was not to be done at a stroke. France must 
first be knocked out as a military power. Russia 
must be either defeated or squared. Germany 
must command more ports on the North Sea. 
When she had established her supremacy in Europe, 
then was the time to deal with England and after 
England, America. 

In the years before the war we might trace the 
development of this policy. Russia was pushed 
into a war with Japan in order to divert Russian 
mihtary power from the German border to the 
Pacific coast, and when Russia was in difficulties, 
Germany took the opportunity of fixing upon her 
a commercial treaty that gave Germany the whole 
of the Russian market. In the meantime a vast 
network of railways was being got ready for the 
attack upon France, and as a preliminary, Belgium 
was penetrated in every direction by German 
agents. While Germany was building her fleet, 



XX INTRODUCTION 

England was being beguiled and seduced by atten- 
tions and flatteries. Everything was done that 
could be done, sometimes by flatteries and some- 
times by threats, to separate England from France 
and to secure at least English neutrality if not 
English friendship. Let me give one example out 
of many: 

At the end of October, 1912, there was a well 
organized peace conference of Germans, Anglo- 
Germans, and English friends of Germanj^ held 
at the Guildhall in London. One of the principal 
speakers was Herr Hermann Hecht of Berlin, who 
delivered a lecture to prove that it was to the in- 
terest of England to throw in her lot with Germany 
against America. England and Germany, he said, 
should stand together to meet the danger that comes 
from the United States, whose rapidly developing 
industries had become a menace to both countries. 

I need not disguise from you that at that time 
there was a party in England, as there was a party 
in France, which preached submission to Germany 
as the best and safest policy. Mr. J. A. Spender, 
the editor of the "Westminster Gazette," wrote a. 
series of articles to prove that England could secure 
peace with Germany on certain conditions. Among 
these conditions were these, that England should 
never have a large army and that she should guar- 
antee Germany perpetual free trade in English 
markets. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

These conditions bring us face to face with 
the economic question. And the economic question 
is the key to the whole war. When Mr. Spender 
proposed that Germany should have perpetual free 
trade in England as a condition of peace, he pro- 
posed nothing less than the abdication of British 
sovereignty. He proposed that England should 
become an annex of Germany's industrial system, 
and that the British Empire itself, as far as its 
economic policy could be controlled by the Central 
Government, should also be part of the German 
economic power. If this design had been carried 
out, and it was in the way of being carried out, 
Germany would have based her military power on 
the whole wealth and resources of a British Empire 
enslaved to her interests, and would have become 
as an industrial power, the equal, if not the superior, 
of the United States. The Germans had already 
gone some way upon this road. Almost every 
British industry was penetrated by German influ- 
ence. It was a curious swing of the pendulum. 
In the early part of the nineteenth century the 
British trade interests were supreme in almost every 
German city. Hamburg was a depot of the 
English clotli trade, and there was a quarter in 
Berlin called "Petty Manchester." In 1914, upon 
the eve of this great war, there was a quarter in 
Manchester which might have been called "Petty 
Berlin." Bradford, the center of the English 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

woolen trade, was full of Germans. London was 
so much under the thumb of German finance that 
when the war^^ibroke out one German magnate had 
to be naturalized in order to save British credit. 
The Deutsche Bank had an office in which it em- 
ployed no less than four hundred clerks, its princi- 
pal business being to secure German savings to fin- 
ance German industries. Other German banks 
were almost as strongly represented. The metal 
exchange had become almost a German monopoly, 
Germany controlled the spelter and the copper 
which was mined in the British Empire. Germany 
was strong in the English coal trade, and had al- 
ready begun to buy up Welsh coal-mines. German 
shipping had forced its way into the British con- 
ferences. Australia supplied Germany with her 
metals. South Africa with her wool, India with her 
hides and jute. No difference was made whether 
they went to Germany or England, although the 
Germans were almost openly using this wealth to 
forge a hammer with which to break the British 
Empire in pieces. In every British city there was 
an influential party, small perhaps in numbers, but 
strong in wealth, that was bound to German in- 
terests by something stronger than sentiment — 
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be 
also." 

Besides the Germans themselves, naturalized and 
unnaturalized, who formed centers of German 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

propaganda, those Englishmen who lived by the 
German trade were blind to the German danger. 
They were not only blind ; they considered it a ben- 
efit. An enemy who put money into their pockets 
was no enemy to them. They grew fat on the 
danger that threatened then' countrymen. And 
they were more than reconciled, they rejoiced in 
the approaching supremacy of the German indus- 
trial system. 

You in America do not quite understand this 
danger, because you are protected by a high tariff 
wall in which your industries grow up strong and 
secure. Generally speaking, the German who goes 
to America must become an American. He must 
throw in his lot with you. He cannot be merely 
an advance agent for a German industry. Your 
tariff prevents it. When he comes to you he must 
bring with him the sum of his energies and his cap- 
ital, and he must plant his industry on American 
soil. In England it is different owing to our lack 
of protection. The German in England is the for- 
warding agent of Germany. He remains a Ger- 
man, not only a German in blood, but a German in 
interest. That is a difference between protection 
and free trade which economists have not observed. 
It is a vital difference nevertheless. 

This German party in England had its reflection 
in British politics. I may say without exaggera- 
tion that it controlled the British Government in 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

the nine years before the war. Joseph Cham- 
berlain in his tariff-reform movement had what was 
in essence a nati^mal movement to protect England 
against this German danger. It was never so de- 
scribed. Indeed, those who took part in it did not 
realize the object of their own crusade. Cham- 
berlain always placed his movement on the lower 
ground of increasing British wealth. It might 
have been better if he had placed it on the higher 
ground of protecting British nationality^ But 
Chamberlain had the limitations of his class and 
upbringing, and he was disarmed at the very be- 
ginning, or so I am told, by a telegram which he 
received from the German Emperor, who congrat- 
ulated him on his policy and wished him success. It 
was a move which showed that the Germans well 
understood Chamberlain's friendly and unsuspicious 
character, and nothing could have been better cal- 
culated to take the sting and fire out of the national 
uprising. 

But in Chamberlain's time the German danger 
was neither so great nor so obvious as it afterwards 
became. It advanced in giant strides when the 
Liberal party took up the German cause. I have 
said enough to show that the German cause in 
England is the cause of free trade, that is to say, 
a cause which is willing to acquiesce in the free entry 
of German manufactures while Germany main- 
tains her tariff on British manufactures. 



INTRODtrCTlON xxv 

Why did the Liberal party take up the German 
cause? I am not prepared to swear. It is a mat- 
ter of guess-work and suspicion. But the fact re- 
mains that they fought in the cause of Germany 
with an ardor and a skill which, if it had been used 
against Germany, would have given us the victory 
long ago. The common explanation is the party- 
fund system. Democracy is to the party system, 
what religion is to the average man — he worships 
it on Sunday and follows his own interests all the 
rest of the week. The chief interest of a political 
party is to get into power, and in England that 
interest cannot be served without a plentiful supply 
of money. It is calculated that a general election 
costs one million pounds sterling, a capital value 
which is represented in interest by the salaries of 
ministers and offices given to friends and a pohcy 
calculated to benefit supporters. It is obvious that 
a milhon pounds sterling does not come out of the 
air, and it is certain that the great German indus- 
tries represented in England either by German or 
English men, supplied a certain proportion of this 
party fund. They were fairly safe in so doing, 
because in this country a party fund is a secret fund. 
It is in the hands of one man. It is never publicty 
audited, I believe it is not even secretly audited. 
There are no books kept, or at least no books open 
to the public. Even the political chief of the party 
does not know how the money comes or how it is 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

administered. It is considered safer and more re- 
spectable not to inquire. Thus it comes about that 
an Enghsh prime minister may be expansively- 
ignorant that he is betraying his own country, and 
that the price of betrayal is either in his own pocket 
or in the pockets of his friends. 

Besides the German interests in the Liberal 
Party, there were other British interests which sup- 
ported the free trade system. The great cotton 
industry of Manchester considered itself fully pro- 
tected by the moisture of its climate and the skill 
and low wages of its operators. It existed upon 
fine calculations, and considered that if the loaf 
went up a halfpenny, it might not be able to sur- 
vive. Then there was the great coal industry. 
The English coal owner was naturally protected. 
No one wanted to dmnp coal on this country, and 
his whole interest lay in exporting a valuable raw 
material to Germany. It did not matter to him 
that his raw material was used by Germany as the 
basis of a thousand manufactures that all added to 
German power and helped to enslave British in- 
dustry. In particular, the key industry of Ger- 
many, aniline dyes, was based largely on British 
coal and was an important factor in the dependence 
of even the British manufacturer upon the German 
industrial sj^stem. And there was the shipping 
industry, well content to make profits by carrying 
German manufactures. Then there was a vast vot- 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

ing population known vaguely to the economist 
as the consumers, the clerks and people with small 
fixed incomes who were easily persuaded that their 
chief interest in life lay in cheapness. These in- 
terests and this mass of population were all taught 
to believe that nothing mattered except our daily 
bread. As long as it came into their mouths there 
was no need to worry about the dangers of war 
and the menace of German domination. Indeed 
the politicians persuaded them that the Germans 
were innocent and kind people who never dreamed 
of killing a fly, much less of designing an injury to 
a friendly neighbor. As long as we did not stand 
in the way of Germany, as long as we gave her a 
free hand in Turkey and the near East and in 
central Africa, and as long, above all, as we main- 
tained free trade, we might be quite sure that the 
German Emperor would do us no harm. 

Such was the theory of the Liberal party in Eng- 
land. But in practice there were obstacles. There 
was, first of all, the awkward fact that Germany 
was building a very large fleet, and that her su- 
premacy in the steel trade gave her the power to 
build at an ever-increasing ratio. Then, there was 
the awkward fact that Germany was pushing us 
out in many old spheres of interest, in South Amer- 
ica, in Turkey, and in Africa. Above all, there 
was the awkward fact that our manufacturers who 
would not be soothed by any sleeping mixture, were 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

constantly agitating for protection. All these irri- 
tants kept England but half awake. Englishmen 
slumbered uneasity, despite Admiral Fisher's assur- 
ance that they might sleep safely in their beds. 
The little alarm-clock made in Germany was always 
going off. There was something wrong with the 
works that made it ring at all sorts of inconvenient 
hours. The night before the dawn of the war was 
a restless night for England. Even Lord Haldane 
confessed afterwards that his visits to Germany left 
him very uneasy in his mind. 

While British economic policy was founded on 
trade, German economic policy was founded on pro- 
duction. There was a close alliance between the 
German Government and the gi'eat German man- 
ufacturers, and German foreign policy was merely 
the application of German economic policy to the 
outside world. It was inspired by two great mo- 
tives, — to secure markets for German manufactures 
and raw materials for German industries. With 
this object Germany worked in South America, in 
Africa, in Asia Minor, in the Pacific. She ex- 
tracted from Turkey and England the great con- 
cession of the Bagdad Railway. She worked for 
the control of a great belt of tropical territory 
across Africa, and inspired a campaign to secure 
the Belgian Congo, in which Sir Roger Casement 
and Mr. E. D. Horel were either consciously or un- 
consciously the agents. For this purpose also she 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

pushed Russia into a Japanese war and, when 
Russia was in difficulties, extracted from her a fa- 
vorable commercial treaty. 

And this policy inspired also her great offensive 
in Europe. The object of the offensive in Europe 
was to square Russia, destroy France, and prepare 
for a second offensive against the British Empire. 
It may be asked why Germany should bother about 
attacking an empire in wliich she enjoyed such 
privileges as have been described. The answer 
is that Germany never considered these privileges 
secure. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and 
South Africa had all with one accord protected their 
industries and given preference to British manu- 
factures, despite the dissuasions and blandishments 
of the British free trade party. That was an evil 
omen. Then there was the constant threat of 
Chamberlain's campaign. What if it should be 
successful? The prospect that British industries 
should be placed on the same level as German in- 
dustries was a thought intolerable to the German 
statesman. It must be placed beyond doubt, for 
the British Empire was vital to the German indus- 
trial system. 

While there was this great economic temptation, 
there was also a military temptation equally great. 
Germany knew her own strength. She knew that 
steel is the master of gold and that she produced 
twice as much steel as any other country in Europe. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

She had prepared a vast system of railways and 
her mobihzation arrangements were so complete 
that she could calculate upon a start of several vital 
days over her enemies. She had thus in her hands, 
the power of surprise, the tremendous weapon of 
initial offensive. Her arms and munition factories 
were the largest in the world. Her equipment of 
heavy guns and machine-guns was a tactical sur- 
prise prepared for her victims. She had such a 
network of commercial, industrial, and official spies 
and agents in Russia that she thought, and rightly 
thought, that she could disorganize the Russian mil- 
itary machine. She could put sand in every cog 
and a spoke in every wheel. She had spared no 
pains to make her interests supreme in Belgium, in 
Holland, and in Scandinavia, and she knew French 
politics well enough to count upon a good deal of 
slackness and inefficiency in the French defensive 
at least in the beginning of the struggle. She 
thought she had sufficient interest in England to 
secure neutrality of the British Empire until it 
was too late for England to come to the assistance 
of France. 

Such were the German calculations, and looking 
back upon them, we are bound to admit that they 
were not very far out. If they failed, it was only 
by a hair's breadth. None but an Englishman will 
ever understand the agonized suspense of the end 
of July, 1914, when the English Government sat 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

like a child blowing at the puff-ball of a dandelion 
and saying alternately, "I will fight, I will not 
fight." It was a toss-up ; or if it was not a toss-up, 
if it was never uncertain, the underlying causes of 
certainty that England would enter the war were 
hidden from mortal eyes. It was deep in the heart 
and mind of the British nation, too deep for poli- 
ticians and diplomats to understand. 

It will not be thought that I am descrying my 
own countr)^ if I exercise the privilege of every 
Englishman to criticize his own Government. The 
vices of the politician bring into higher relief the 
soundness of the British people. Now as always 
the valor of British soldiers and British sailors re- 
deems the good name of the British nation. 

A nation, when we consider it, is nothing but 
nature's largest animal. It acts as England did 
in the summer of 1914, upon instinct. The country 
went into the war not because the statesmen willed 
it, but because the nation willed it. And the nation 
willed it as a man puts up his fist to guard his face 
from a blow. It was an instinctive and involuntary 
movement. 

Of course I shall be told that England went 
into the war for the neutrality of Belgium, for a 
punctilio of honor. Honor is to a nation w^hat 
good-will and credit are to a merchant, but behind 
the question of honor there was nothing less than 
the existence of England and the British Empire. 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

The independence of the Netherlands and Flanders 
has always been the first condition of British se- 
curity. Englishmen in every generation fought 
that Flanders might be free, not because the free- 
dom of Flanders was an end in itself, but because 
on the freedom of Flanders depended the freedom 
of England. 

But if we entered the war instinctively, our Gov- 
ernment remained wedded to its theories and to 
its friends. It could not quite forget the old tender 
relations. It did not want to fight Germany and 
it did not want to knock Germany out. Prince 
Lichnowsky probably told the truth in his report 
of his parting conversation with Sir Edward Grey. 
England was always to be ready with her good 
offices to help Germany out of the war. We were 
sincerely sorry for Germany. She had made a 
sad miscalculation. She was going to receive a 
terrible defeat. We must not hit her too hard. 
She was a good friend who had suddenly gone mad. 
She must be kept off with the point of an umbrella 
until we got her into a strait-waistcoat. Then we 
would lock her up for six months in a pleasant 
private asylum, and when she had completely re- 
covered her senses and her temper, she would return 
with an affectionate welcome to the bosom of the 
European family. 

But fortunately or unfortunately for us, the Ger- 
man did not look at it in that way. He had taken 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

on more than he had meant to take on at one time, 
but he still thought he had a good fighting chance, 
and he proceeded to hit as hard and as frequently 
as ever he could, using not only his fists in the ap- 
proved British fashion, but his head, his teeth, and 
his hobnailed boots. 

The full meaning of these tactics was not at first 
realized by the British Government. We wakened 
up to them gradually. At first, for example, the 
motto of England was "Business as usual." And 
this motto was so assiduously followed that we 
neglected even to blockade Germany, and even per- 
mitted a passenger traffic in German reservists in 
neutral ships. There have been many explanations 
of the fact that at least a year after the war began 
there was not even a show of a blockade. The apol- 
ogists of the Asquith administration are good 
enough to say that you Americans prevented it, 
that you insisted on driving your usual trade with 
Germany thi'ough neutral countries. I have never 
believed that explanation. If it were true, it would 
mean that Americans had forgotten their own his- 
tory, that they had forgotten, above all, the teach- 
ings of their greatest naval authority. Captain 
Mahan. It would mean also that American for- 
eign policy was so frivolous that in the first part 
of the war America could support one side and in 
the second part, the other side. I have not so mean 
an opinion of American statesmen. If they are in 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

the war now, they are in the war because they per- 
ceived from the beginning that Germany was a 
menace to the United States. But if they per- 
ceived that, from the beginning they could not have 
been so fooHsh as to prevent England from using 
the chief weapon in her armory. A nation would 
be indeed wanting in common sense if she prevented 
us from knocking out her enemy in order to be at 
the trouble and expense of knocking out the en- 
emy herself. 

And there is another flaw in this apology. In 
those fii'st years of no blockade it was not only 
American goods that was going into Germany, but 
British goods. British cottons, British tea, British 
oil seeds and copra, British wool, were all flowing 
into Holland, Denmark, and Finland in such enor- 
mous quantities that every one who had any interest 
in the matter must have known that these goods 
were going not to neutral countries, but to Ger- 
many. If we were engaged in that traffic, with 
what face could we ask America to stop it? No; 
the explanation is that we were not at first thor- 
oughly in earnest. 

It is the most dangerous thing in the world to 
go into a fight without being in earnest especially 
if the other man is in earnest. It paralyzes every 
effort; it weakens every blow. If you are not in 
earnest about war, in God's name remain at peace. 



INTRODUCTION xxxv, 

That is a motto which should be written over every 
foreign office. 

I say all this frankly and openly because we are 
in earnest now and because it is highly desirable 
that our new ally should understand the importance 
of being in earnest. If you are in earnest, for- 
give me. I only warn you because I wish you to 
avoid our mistakes and our misfortunes. We had 
the means to defeat Germany in the first two years 
of the war. We neglected those means, and the 
evil consequences of that neglect dog our footsteps 
to this da)'^. We are now using every effort and 
calling up every man; if you hear reports to the 
contrary, you are not to believe them. The old 
country is stripped bare of men, and in every house 
there is mourning; every family has made its su- 
preme sacrifice. The sacrifice is greater because 
it is late. In war, humanity to an enemy is cruelty 
to yourself. The only way of waging war is to 
hit as hard as ever you can so as to get the horrid 
business over as quickly as possible. There is an- 
other fallacy which has done us a lot of harm, that 
we can arrange somehow or other a draw with Ger- 
many. There are some fights in which compro- 
mise is impossible, and this is one of them. If 
Germany thinks she can govern the world, we must 
knock that idea out of her head, and it is plain 
that we cannot knock that idea out of her head 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

until she is beaten. If we cannot beat Germany, 
she retains that idea, and will act on it in the future, 
as she has acted upon it in the past. We came to 
a stalemate peace with Napoleon and had to fight 
him all over again. If we cannot defeat Germany, 
Germany will in the end defeat us. We must 
keep that proposition firmly in front of us. The 
truth is the best food for fighting on, and if people 
say we cannot defeat Germany, they show them- 
selves the sort of people who mean to be defeated. 
We could have defeated Germany before now if 
that sort of sentiment had not prevailed in the Al- 
lied councils. We began by going all round the 
ring giving Germany little taps. Flanders was 
open to us, a place for a knock-out blow ; the North 
Sea was under our command, a place for another 
knock-out blow. Instead of concentrating there, 
we squandered our energies on Saloniki, on Syria, 
on the Dardanelles, on Mesopotamia. Victory 
without tears was our motto ; we thought we could 
run round a circle before Germany could run across 
it. The ablest politicians weakened the army in 
Flanders in order to strengthen the army at Salon- 
iki. Then they blamed our generals for not push- 
ing through. They thought it easier to skip across 
the Julian Alps by way of Libau to Venice than 
to break a German line over flat country near our 
base of supplies. Yet if we had concentrated all 
pur resources that we have squandered in the 



INTRODUCTION xxxvii 

eastern adventures upon Passchendaele and Cam- 
brai, is there any reasonable doubt that we should 
have beaten Germany by now? Soldiers, at least, 
say that there is none. If we had shut off from 
iGermany every ton of rubber, every bale of wool 
and cotton, every chest of tea, every pound of 
tobacco, if we had prevented Denmark and Holland 
importing feeding stuffs to be turned into animal 
fats in order to feed Germany, is there any reason- 
able doubt that we could have defeated Germany by 
a blockade? Sailors, at least, will tell you that 
there is none. Therefore do not let us make war 
on the assumption that we cannot beat our enemy. 
It is the sort of assumption that comes true if we 
believe it and does not come true if we do not be- 
lieve it. If we believe it, we should make peace 
at once. For if there is one thing certain about 
war, it is that the side that believes it cannot win 
is going to lose. There is still another fallacy that 
may do a deal of mischief. It is the fallacy that 
this war is going to end war and that mankind will 
be turned into lambs by fighting like tigers. It 
is a fallacy that has deluded every generation since 
the Israelites dreamed of turning swords into plow- 
shares. This war may end war or it may not, but 
seeing that war has happened in every generation 
since the beginning of the world, it would be folly 
to calculate upon it as a certainty. As far as we 
may judge from history and experience, the only 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

security of a nation has been in its ability to defend 
itself. The means of defense are two, one your 
own power and the other the power of your friends. 
Now we have seen that the basis of military power 
is economic power and that a nation can hardly be 
said to be strong or even independent unless it has 
a healthy industrial system. If England had 
possessed a healthy industrial system, there would 
be no war now. It was the dependence of England 
upon German industry that encouraged German 
statesmen to believe that England could not go to 
war. This dependence was the result of a policy 
that left English markets open to the German man- 
ufacturer, while German markets were closed to 
the British manufacturer. The British Samson 
had his hair cut while he lay asleep in the lap of 
free-trade Delilah, and he will be lucky if he 
escapes the punishment of such neglect, which is 
to grind corn, blind and in chains, for the bread 
of the Philistines. But unless British industries 
regain their native wealth and strength, the future 
of England will resemble her remote past, and she 
will again be the hewer of wood and the drawer 
of water, the annex and dependent of the German 
industrial and political system. The idea of a 
league of nations is nothing more than the old 
aspiration of the first German Empire, and a league 
of nations in which England was commercially and 
industrially a slave of Germany would mean the 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

supremacy of Germany in Europe. The United 
States would have to face alone a world in which 
Germany was the controlling influence. England 
is to America what Belgium was to England. It 
is a buffer-state. If England is destroyed, there 
is nothing left between America and Germany's 
power. The counterscarp is in the hands of the 
enemy, and it only remains to cross the moat. It 
is obviously in the American interest that the buf- 
fer-state should be strong. 

If the buffer-state is weak, as Belgium was weak, 
it is a poorish sort of defense. If England sinks 
into a dependency to the German industrial system, 
her value as a buffer-state disappears. I see here 
and there signs of a tendency in America to fall 
in with the German idea and work for a free-trade 
England. A free-trade England may give Amer- 
ica a little more wealth, but it will not give America 
security. England may remain a market, but will 
cease to be an ally. 

Adam Smith said long ago that security is more 
important than opulence, and that all nations should 
act upon that maxim. If you Americans accept 
it, you will hope and work not for a weak, but for 
a strong, England. For unless there is a strong 
England, there is no buffer-state between you and 
Germanj^ and there is no balance of power in 
Europe. It would be the worst of all possible 
blunders if you fell into the German trap and 



xl INTRODUCTION 

helped Germany to keep open British markets for 
German goods after the war. The end of it would 
be that we should have a new war like the War of 
the Spanish Succession, and Americans and Ger- 
mans would fight over the prostrate body of the 
British Empire. The best hope for the world is 
that a strong British Empire should ally itself with 
a strong America to maintain peace and the Anglo- 
Saxon idea of liberty. 

Ian D. Colvin. 



FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 



FLASHES FROM THE 
FRONT 

CHAPTER I 

EXIT ASQUITH: enter LLOYD GEORGE 

December, 1916. The cabinet crisis has brought 
into the foreground a figure always interesting in 
America, the king. 

The present king is much underrated outside of 
England. Physique has much to do with person- 
ality, and King George is small and delicate, as 
his father was robust and large. George is shy; 
Edward was a man of the world. But those who 
know the former describe him as a man of great 
vigor and an expert in diplomacy. He possesses 
a minute knowledge of international relations. 
For example, I am told that he knows all about 
and takes a keen interest in the relations between 
the United States and Mexico. 

A democratic country entertains an unfailing 
curiosity about a monarch. What influence has the 
English king in the present situation, and what is 
he permitted to do? Is he a factor to be reckoned 

3 



4 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

with ? Would King Edward VII, if alive to-day, 
have been a real factor in the situation? 

I have taken some pains to try to learn from 
people who ought to know what the facts are, but 
the simple truth is that nobody, not even King 
George himself, possesses accurate information. 
The King of England is in a twilight zone between 
old law and custom and new. For example, he 
possesses certain legal or constitutional powers of 
veto, but no English king has used these for four 
hundred years. 

The king received Mr. Asquith's resignation and 
sent for Mr. Bonar Law to form a new ministry. 
When Mr. Law declined, the king sent for Mr. 
Lloyd George, who accepted, succeeded in the task, 
and, going back to the king, "kissed hands," which 
put the stamp of conclusion on the job. 

All these proceedings were treated with the ut- 
most seriousness by press and public, as if the king 
were an autocratic sovereign. The fiction of king- 
ship is dear to the heart of this ultra-democratic 
country. 

It is difficult to determine the precise share that 
the king had in forming the new Govermiient. The 
authorities gave him to understand in some language 
intelligible to English parliaments and kings that 
the right thing to do was to accept Mr. Asquith's 
resignation and then, after calling on Mr. Bonar 
Law, who would probably decline, to call on Mr. 



ENTER LLOYD GEORGE 5 

Lloyd George, who would probably accept. All 
this was done with an outward show of authority, 
as if the words "my kingdom" always used in the 
speech from the throne was an accurate designation. 

As a matter of fact, the king does not dismiss 
or set up ministries, but all the same he has great 
power rooted in use and tradition and upheld by 
the respect and reverence of the people. 

Public opinion in a great democracy is moving in 
mysterious ways its wonders to perform. It makes 
itself vocal raucously. 3Ir. Britling's simile is not 
unfitting — "A shipload of monkeys on a dark night 
in a rough sea." Westminster shouts, printing- 
presses shriek, confusion reigns, but all this may 
be only the barrage behind which a great democracy 
advances nobly to its ordeal. 

The two figures that stand out to the American 
point of view are Asquith and Lloyd George. 
They are names inter-twined in a Liberal period 
of more than eight years. Lloyd George supplied 
the vision and initiative, Asquith the judgment and 
conciliation. The complementary qualities of these 
two made possible the success of a Liberal govern- 
ment that survived all these years without a Liberal 
majority behind it. Asquith's political skill and 
Lloyd George's constructive genius have held to- 
gether a motley array of factions in Parliament rep- 
resenting different and at times antagonistic prin- 
ciples. 



6 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

But it was a combination better for peace than 
war. The very quahties that enabled Asquith to 
put parties together in a beautiful pattern of mosaic 
during peace have paralyzed him in war. He is 
essentially a prince of pacificators. He makes 
things comfortable ; he reassures anxieties, puts the 
best face on difficulties as they arise, harmonizes 
differences, makes a fair distribution of the loaves 
and fishes, deals tactfull}' with his colleagues, meets 
equably every situation that arises, speaks elo- 
quently on every subject. Even in peace such abil- 
ities would not alone bring success to the adminis- 
tration. That is where Lloyd George came in. 
He furnished what the prime minister lacked, and 
in normal times the two were a wonderful team. 

But Asquith as a war premier never commanded 
entire public confidence. His formation of the 
coalition cabinet was a wonderful piece of political 
carpentry, but it was no sooner done than it became 
plain that it was an unworkable mechanism. When 
you think of Hindenburg, you think of strength, 
brutality, and victory, but one does not associate 
victory with Asquith. It has been said that tem- 
perament to an individual person is like climate to 
a race. It is fate. And Asquith does not possess 
war temperament. He cannot be rough or un- 
couth. He is considerate in all circmnstances. 
Hindenburg smashed every existing plan in Ger- 
many in three weeks and brutally substituted his 



ENTER LLOYD GEORGE 7 

own rough-hewn strategy. Asquith has taken 
longer than that to choose a food controller. 

But the prime mmister is a consummate master 
of practical politics, and he has been a hard man 
to unhorse. While he is no generator of original 
force, he knows how to guide the conflicting cur- 
rents to his own mill-wheel. The advocates of a 
new regime have had him almost beaten time and 
again. A diplomat told me that he had gone to 
the House three times to see Asquith fall, but each 
time Asquith had fallen on his feet. 

If the war had not gone ill in these last weeks, 
he might have stayed through. With Rumania 
"paying through the nose" because of somebody's 
failure to organize the Allied defense, Greece re- 
warding Allied forbearance with treachery, and the 
thi'eatening development of the submarine cam- 
paign against the food supply of Britain, press op- 
position was able to focus an attack that Asquith 
with all his skill at fence could not ward off. The 
public lost all patience with what was pictured as 
ministerial procrastination and incapacity. In the 
pictorial language of the "Morning Post" "Asquith 
folds his hands; Grey wi'ings his hands, and the 
rest of the twenty-three rub their hands." The im- 
pression that is here so aptly conveyed had at last 
been driven home to the public by a campaign in 
which the major portion of the press joined. 

Even so, it was necessary that Lloyd George 



8 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

should lead the revolt against his chief, and at the 
very last, when the card of the war minister's resig- 
nation was played, Asquith had a trump that almost 
took the trick. For every political and journalistic 
spokesman of the Government came this solemn 
assurance, "Labor will not support a minority 
headed by Lloyd George or any other man except 
Asquith." Without the Labor vote no Govern- 
ment can command a majority in the House. 
Without a majority there must be a general elec- 
tion in the very crisis of war, with all that the delay 
and anarchy of such an event may mean. 

All the same Lloyd George stuck to his decision, 
and the die was cast. Lloyd George has lost the 
labor following because he has refused to serve any 
particular interest in time of war. As to his pa- 
triotism and unselfishness and sincerity, he has the 
confidence of the country. There exists a measure 
of doubt, but that is inevitable about almost any 
man not hitherto tried out in absolute leadership. 
In the best informed circles he is not regarded as 
an executive man in the usual sense of the term. 
He is almost the opposite of Asquith. His nature 
is emotional and imaginative. His processes are 
not always outwardly logical, but he has that in- 
sight that so often characterizes genius. His vision 
and enthusiasm generate warmth and inspiration. 
It is by his power of stimulation rather than by 
skill in organizing that he gets results. 



ENTER LLOYD GEORGE 9 

Lord Kitchener was accounted the greatest mas- 
ter of detail in EngHsh pubHc life. After he had 
failed to set munition-making in motion on the 
titanic scale required by the war, this David of 
Wales accomplished the task and saved England. 
So the instinct of the people is pointing a way to 
the path of salvation for England. A great democ- 
racy reaches out its hands to a great democrat in 
its hour of doubt and peril. Come how it may, 
through coahtion, through one man or another's 
nominal headship, or what not, it is in the air that 
the need has at last called out the man and that 
in the inspired zeal of that man for the cause of 
liberty and free institutions, his love of his country, 
and his unalterable will to win, lies the hope of 
democracy everywhere. Whether now or a little 
later, Lloyd George will rule England and finish 
the war. 



CHAPTER II 

PRESIDENT Wilson's proposals: 
Europe's reception of, peace without victory 

December, 1916. Democracy in England had 
at last shaken off its lethargy and stood organized 
and efficient for war. The old slack policies were 
cast aside, the self-sacrifice of the levee en masse and 
short rations were faced smilingly. With some- 
thnig veiy like the spirit of festival the British pub- 
lic from costermonger to peer were lining up behind 
the new Government. 

Then came President Wilson into their midst. 
To say that it produced the effect of an apparition 
is to state the fact mildly. It was like a death's- 
head at a feast. 

There was surprise, shock, consternation. To- 
morrow may bring explanations, a better under- 
standing, a truer perspective. To-day Britain al- 
most reels as from a staggering blow. 

British opinion unanimously rejects the assump- 
tion of equality of motive and aspiration among the 
belligerents. That is the implication that goes to 
the quick of British sensibihties. 

Whether the President's suggestion will evoke 

10 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 11 

a response among the always less promptly vocal 
working classes will require a few days to ascertain. 
The classes who usually speak for British public 
opinion have been swift to register protest and re- 
jection. 

Without the belief in the rightness of the Allies' 
cause by most of the hundred million English- 
speaking people on the other side of the Atlantic, 
England could not have gone on. The President's 
note now constitutes in some degree a withdrawal 
of American sympathy and moral support. That 
one view is uppermost to-day when the whole sky 
is darkened by the cloud from the West. 

In this atmosphere the motive of the German pro- 
posal is judged insincere and cowardly or a trap 
for the unwary. Those capable of discussing the 
pending questions philosophically in these tense 
hours admit that Lloyd George did not bang and 
bolt the door, that the subject of peace, having been 
introduced by one belligerent, must be considered 
sooner or later by all, and that the appeal to reason, 
once invoked, cannot be dismissed and will ulti- 
mately prevail. 

The question is whether President Wilson is the 
right instrumentality, whether he can come un- 
invited into the field of mediation, and whether he 
presents himself at the right time and in the right 
way. 

To-day's signs may be only those that lie on 



12 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

the surface. From stricken Europe there may 
come a different answer, in which case President 
Wilson's "mistake" might take its place in the list 
of historical decisions that cut through to the heart 
of things. 

Perhaps peace can be secured by compelling the 
nations to reduce their grievances and aims to the 
concrete and submit them to the test of publicity. 

January 5, 1917. London winced to-night at 
reports from Washington that President Wilson 
had received peace terms from Germany and was 
meditating the sending of another note. The hope 
is expressed here that action will be suspended until 
the Entente answer to the President is presented 
and digested. 

In Paris the last touches are being put to the 
reply to Wilson, to which a high degree of op- 
timism attaches both in France and England. 
There is far greater interest in this note than there 
was in the reply to Germany. It is recognized 
that the impression made by it may change the 
whole war outlook. The world is at attention, and 
every word will be read and weighed. 

The kaiser created the situation ; President Wil- 
son heightened the dramatic interest; the occasion 
was made to order for Lloyd George. He will im- 
prove it unless he has been smothered under the 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 13 

multiplicity and confusion of counsel. The effect 
of committee work on such a document is desic- 
cating. 

There are two big objectives. Particularly 
aimed at first is American opinion. Nobody be- 
lieved that America had reached the point where she 
must fight on one side or the other and that she 
is so indifferent which it is that it is almost a matter 
of flipping a penny, but President Wilson has ap- 
parently been willing to put the belligerents vir- 
tually on a parity. 

The answer to him will address directly the peo- 
ple of America at a time when they are all listening. 
It will be an appeal not to identify the Allies with 
the Teutons, either as participants in an insane and 
murderous and purposeless conflict or as humanity- 
loving and God-fearing defenders of weak states 
and helpless peoples. 

The Allies hope to make America feel that they 
are pouring out their blood and treasure in order 
that American democracy may live; but that if 
their sacrifices should be in vain and Germany 
should win, democracy everywhere would lose, and 
the United States, being the biggest democracy, 
would be the heaviest loser. 

There is no idea in this appeal of obtaining new 
practical results in America. The Allies want the 
same good feeling they have always had there, and 



14 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

the same fair treatment. Above all, they want to 
be let alone to push their case against Germany for 
*'a verdict with costs." 

The second big objective is German opinion. 
Reasonable human beings here do not believe the 
German people are wicked, but that they are under 
an obsession, and that if a gleam of sanity and 
justice can be shot through the armor of Kaiserism 
straight to the German people, it might tend to 
bring them to their senses. There are not many 
who believe that Germany can be crushed by mil- 
itary force. Disillusion is the best hope of ending 
the war. If doubts can once be sown throughout 
Germany, they will spring up like mustard seed. 

Germany's power has rested on the morbid faith 
and hysterical loyalty that the Prussian autocracy 
has commanded from the whole German people. 
They have been working in harness until they bless 
the yoke that galls their necks. 

Whether or no the Allied reply to President 
Wilson can be kept from the German people or 
will influence their minds if it is laid before them, 
it is at least plain that a process of disillusionment 
has begun in Austria-Hungary, and the back-fire 
will reach Germany sooner or later. The new Em- 
peror Charles and his advisers are evidently be- 
ginning to suspect that it is a case of "heads I win, 
tails you lose." 

Discussion of the dismemberment of the dual 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 15 

monarchy in the event of a German victory is heard 
in every capital. There may be separate kings of 
Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, but they will all 
be Kaiser Wilhelm's sons. 

If Germany loses, matters will be still worse for 
Austria. The war is stabbing at her vitals. She 
feels all the pinch of it, but has none of the day- 
dreams. There are no Bagdad railways for Aus- 
tria, no Eastern empires, no castles in the air. 
Hers is a drab prospect, and there is no doubt that 
Vienna curses that day at the end of July, 1914, 
when a scheming German ambassador cut off the 
diplomatic conversation which had already begun 
with St. Petersburg by sweeping all the papers into 
his despatch-box, putting his box under his arm, 
and taking the train for Berlin. 

Impending events in Washington will be watched 
carefully by the British press and public. There 
are two sources of possible friction. The first, that 
the President may be drawn into a treaty with those 
elements in Congress which view the world as hav- 
ing been made yesterday and having nostrums for 
the instant cure for all human ills. The other dan- 
ger arises from the red-tape artists in the British 
Government departments who might at any mo- 
ment supply Washington with the necessary ex- 
plosive. 

January 14, 1917. The Allies' answer to the 



16 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

President's note still figures first as a bull argu- 
ment. The volte- face of opinion is now complete. 
It is seen that the Allies had the trump cards all 
the time and didn't know their value. The Pres- 
ident stood where he could see both hands before 
they were put on the table. With all their wincing 
at first, it is now recognized that the Allies have 
done what was best for them and what should have 
been done voluntarily. Even the imputing of iden- 
tical motives to both belligerents is now accepted 
in good part. The President is thereby given a 
latch-string to the German door which he is free to 
use if the Germans should hereafter have a new 
conception in accord with realities. 

Whether Mr. Wilson acted with calculation or 
whether this was one act of emotion in the course of 
his Presidency, the fact stands out boldly that he 
has scored handsomely. He took what seemed a 
big chance. Three weeks ago he was anathema 
throughout Allied Europe; to-day he is stronger 
and America is stronger in England and France, 
and they have more prestige and there is less enmity 
than perhaps at any time since the sinking of the 
LiUsitania. America for the first time has a sub- 
stantial stock of good-will in Europe, and if the 
advantage is followed up with well-advised inter- 
national statesmanship, the United States may play 
a part that will write President Wilson's name 
large on the page of history. 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 17 

January 24, 1917. London liked neither Pres- 
ident Wilson's note nor his speech to the United 
States Senate, but the disapproval manifested itself 
quite differently in the two cases. The note sur- 
prised and startled England; the speech to the Sen- 
ate may give deeper offense and its effects may 
last longer, but it has caused far less consternation 
judging from personal comment and newspaper 
editorials. There is a much larger minority of 
opinion publicly favorable to the speech than there 
was to the note. 

The speech seems to be regarded as a more or 
less internal American affair. It was not osten- 
sibly an address to Europe, but increased impor- 
tance attaches to it as a representative expression 
of majorit^^ opinion in America. At least, such is 
the belief here. 

The note both wounded and offended English 
sensibilities. Certain passages in it were seized 
upon and misconstrued, and when a more just view 
prevailed, there was reaction. The feeling to-day 
seemed more that of resignation. In the comment 
there was a note of regretful readjustment of public 
opinion to the American attitude, a sort of revalu- 
ation of American friendship toward the Allies on 
a sliding scale downwards. 

As quotations from the press will show, the of- 
fending lance was tipped with a phrase "peace with- 
out victory." In "peace without victory" the Pres- 



18 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

ident has coined a new expression that may share 
honors with "too proud to fight" during the rest 
of the war discussion on this side of the Atlantic. 

Apart from the phrases to which unwarranted 
importance may be given, there is a deeper offense 
to the Enghsh in the imphcation that the belHg- 
erents all stand on the same footing. The vice of 
the whole discussion by the President from the 
English point of view lies in what is regarded as 
a complete misunderstanding of the moral objects 
for which the Allies are fighting. The British mind 
declines to entertain any consideration of the war 
based upon the moral equity of the Entente and 
the Teutons. The suggestion that the head of a 
great neutral country may wish to keep himself in 
a position to maintain friendly relations with both 
sides if he is to play a useful part was not favorably 
received when offered to-day as the possible ex- 
planation. 

February 18, 1917. Within the next few days 
the question of whether the breach of diplomatic 
relations between the United States and Germany 
is to be followed by war will probably be brought 
to an issue. 

Personally, I believe that great forces have been 
set in motion which cannot be stopped, and that 
these forces are certain to smash through to final- 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 19 

ities. On the one hand, Germany must use the 
power of the submarine to the utmost limit. There 
must be neither let nor hindrance. The submarine 
is half-blind, and must fight so, without being re- 
quired to discriminate. 

The German submarine sailor is ruthless or noth- 
ing. To fasten mercy upon him, to ask him to 
spare women and children, is to put him in a strait- 
jacket. The submarine, blind, cruel, and reck- 
lessly destructive, expresses the present mood of 
Prussianized Germany. 

Neither fear of America nor regard for world 
conscience is likely to cheat the Prussian of this 
last throw in the desperate game that he has been 
playing since August, 1914. 

The other great force is the resistance of 
America. What Germany must do, or else aban- 
don her submarine stroke in the perfection of its 
efficiency, America must forbid or else abandon 
her position as a spirited and self-respecting nation. 

Many will say at once that that has happened 
akeady. It is a controversial point not to be 
argued here. The abandonment that I have in 
mind is one that goes far beyond any surrender 
hitherto made, and one that in my opinion is even 
less probable than that Germany should renounce 
her submarine campaign. If President Wilson 
were the veriest weakling, the American people 



20 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

themselves would rise up in indignant protest if 
the sacrifice of national honor were brought home 
to them. 

No President, however pacific, could stand up 
against the feeling that would be aroused at this 
time in the United States by an overt act of the 
barbarous character of the sinking of the Lusitania 
or the Sussex. Such sinkings are inevitable unless 
Germany abandons her program. 

But the present chief magistrate of the Ameri- 
can nation is no weakling. He is an intellectual; 
he eschews emotion; he prefers a method of calcu- 
lation ; but he knows neither hesitation nor fear. 

At the time of the sinking of the Lusitania a 
large, perhaps it might be said the best, section of 
the American public would have liked to see im- 
mediate action. An emotional man like Theodore 
Roosevelt would have given us action. The white 
heat generated in the countrj", which Roosevelt 
would have used against Germany, Wilson per- 
mitted to cool. Again and again the process was 
repeated, and many of us felt that President 
Wilson was condemning the country to a per- 
manent decline in spirit. Rut we saw the other 
day, when he broke off relations with Germany, 
that the American people rose as one man to his 
support. 

It must be clear that unless the President had 
set a goal toward which he was moving, he would 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 21 

never have broken off relations. Dealing with a 
man who never acts on impulse has its advantages. 

With his historian's perspective, President 
Wilson probably realized from the begimiing that 
the United States was sure to be drawn into the 
war. His responsibility was tremendous. He had 
to act for a hundi-ed million people made up of 
many different races, ten per cent, of them of Ger- 
man stock. He had to use the tools in his own 
workshop. He was not Roosevelt, with Roose- 
velt's emotions and driving power: he was an 
analytical, patient, methodical man, with a genius 
for understanding the thought and feeling of the 
people over which he presided. He therefore 
adopted a policy for which he was fitted b}^ tempera- 
ment and intellectual ability, and he was careful 
not to strike against his own limitations. It was 
a triumph for that policy, that after all the serious 
criticism a single act, rupture with Germany, 
changed the tune of comment all over the world 
from faultfinding to approval. A single decision 
justified the entire course of his action; a single 
stroke brought all the jarring atoms into harmony. 

Now at last the President finds himself master 
of the situation. The pause between the rupture 
and the overt act brings a recrudescence of pacifism, 
but it is of a mild form and v/ill prove innocuous. 
Mr. Wilson's method insures the support of the 
country at par, provided always that he waits for 



22 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

the overt act. He must not fight for a negro 
stoker: there are at least thirteen States in the 
South which would go in coldly on such provoca- 
tion. Such a finale, too, would not be in key with 
what has gone before. It would not be wise for 
Mr. Wilson to break the flow of his policy from the 
Lusitania onward. He and the country behind him 
are in perfect concord. There is no room for reac- 
tion. 

When the moment of decision arrives, America 
will enter the war with one hundred per cent, of 
solidarity, with every ounce of her matchless re- 
sources, loyally following a leader who has put her 
into the war because he could "do no otherwise." 

The American people want to be forced into this 
war if they must go in, and they have got a Presi- 
dent who is going to give them their way. But 
both he and they, once in, will fight for all they are 
worth. 

It is doubtful if England, so long baffled by what 
seemed at this distance and from an intensely in- 
terested standpoint inexplicable delay, has yet 
grasped the importance of American participation. 
The addition of resources of a hundred million 
live people, possessing the greatest wealth of any 
nation in the world, added to the superiority of the 
Allies, which is already overwhelming, will abso- 
lutely destroy the last chance of German success. 

Scarcely less important will be the influence of 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 23 

the greatest democracy when the time of settlement 
arrives. The entry of America into the war will 
make for a somider peace and will make sure a 
better world. 

England, August, 1917. Since coming to 
England on the same boat with General Pershing 
and his staff, I have been asked a good many ques- 
tions about America. These questions probably 
represent the points of doubt in the Canadian and 
British mind, and I will try to answer them in the 
interest of good understanding. I beheve that I 
can assume that such inquiries in no sense imply 
distrust of America's motives or methods, but 
rather that those making them wish to be provided 
with information that shall more fully establish 
their faith in, and gratitude to, America. 

Why did America wait nearly three years to 
come in: and more particularly why did not the 
President act in the Lusitania case? 

It was a matter of judgment depending upon 
two things : ( 1 ) The inherent justice of the matter, 
and (2) the attitude of the American people and 
the President's own feeling as well as his capacity 
for action in the circumstances. The President 
possesses certain gifts and limitations of tempera- 
ment and intellect. He is unemotional and 
analytical, and it may be assumed that from the 
beginning he took careful stock of all the assets and 



24, FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

liabilities from a war point of view, including his 
own capacity for leadership. A different type of 
man — let us say Colonel Roosevelt — might have 
been successful in making the sinking of the 
LiUsitania the occasion of going to war. 

The big element in the consideration of whether 
and when to go to war was the country itself. 
First, there was the geographical extent of the 
States stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. 
Naturally, it was difficult to acquaint the in- 
habitants of this great area with the truth about the 
war, to bring it home to them as a matter of actual 
and personal concern. A people springing from 
diverse racial sources, occupying forty-eight 
separate States and enjoying a prosperous peace, 
educated from time immemorial to the idea of keep- 
ing aloof and remote from Em'opean affairs, were 
not easily interested and made sympathetic. 

Was the German propaganda in any *way re- 
sponsible for the delay; and did Count von Bern- 
storff have any influence at the White House? 

No man could have been less amenable to outside 
influence than President Wilson. His conclusions 
were reached by a process of cold reasoning. 
Bernstorff was less than nothing, a minus quantity. 
Indeed, the whole elaborate German mechanism for 
propaganda in the United States was worse than 
a failure. The clumsy effort to falsify facts and 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS 25 

influence judgment had the effect of destroying the 
original German position at the bar of American 
opinion. There was never any need of Enghsh 
propaganda. Bernstorff and Co. did the work for 
England. At every stage American opinion was 
ninety per cent., or more, pro-Ally, and this in the 
face of the large percentage of German stock and 
the immemorial prejudice against the British aris- 
ing out of war grievances and Irish prejudice. 

Are the American people deeply and sincerely 
for the War? 

Not all of them fully realize what war means. 
They have taken the resolution without working 
out in their own minds its ultimate meaning; but 
they know enough of the situation and their part 
in it to make them realize the fullness and finality 
of their committal. Events will bring home to 
them the duties, sacrifices, and misery of war. 

When will the American Army of one million 
men — the number reckoned by the military authori- 
ties as constituting an effective factor — be in the 
field? 

Such an army can be recruited in only a few 
weeks. The soldiers will require, say, three months 
and a half's training, most of which should prefer- 
ably be in Europe. The only element of doubt is 
the question of transportation for the men and sup- 
plies. It all comes back to the big matter in this 
war, the submarine. An American Army of one 



26 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

million men might have been put into the trenches 
by January in time for the Spring fighting in 1918 
if ships could have been found and protection from 
the submarine provided. The prime minister 
speaks confidently about the submarine, but other 
authorities seem to be far less sure. 

Is America doing all that site can? 

Nobody ever is, but in my opinion America's 
effort must be rated as satisfactory, humanly speak- 
ing. In two particulars her effort has been 
monumental, in adopting compulsory military serv- 
ice and in voting money. The latter has already 
prevented a condition rapidly nearing collapse in 
European finance. It was specially timely in sav- 
ing England, whose back was fairly breaking under 
the load. America is now working out many big 
problems for the Allies, which include: enlisting 
and training an army of a million that will be in- 
creased to two million sometime in 1918 ; cooperat- 
ing against the submarine by furnishing fighting 
ships and constructing new shipping; building aero- 
planes in tremendous number; cooperating in in- 
dustrial and economic measures to increase Allied 
resources for fighting the enemy. Our taking our 
stand beside the Allies at a time of collapse in 
Russia makes hopeful a situation that would other- 
wise be desperate. 



CHAPTER III 

A LINCOLN-DAY MESSAGE TO AMERICA 
FROM THE RT. HON. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 

The following message was given by Mr. Lloyd George to 
Mr. Charles H. Grasty in answer to a request for a tribute 
to Abraham Lincoln for publication in the United States on 
Lincoln Day (February 12, 1917), the anniversary of his 
birth. 

I am very glad to respond to your request for a 
message for publication on Lincoln day. I am glad 
because to my mind Abraham Lincoln was one of 
the very first of the world's statesmen, because I 
believe that the battle which we have been fighting 
is at bottom the same battle which your country- 
men fought under Lincoln's leadership more than 
fifty years ago, and most of all, perhaps, because 
I desire to say how much I welcome the proof which 
the last few days have afforded that the American 
people are coming to realize this too. 

Lincoln's life was devoted to the cause of human 
freedom. From the day when he first recognized 
what slavery meant he bent all his energies to its 
eradication from American soil. Yet after years 
of patient effort he was driven to realize that it was 



28 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

not a mere question of abolishing slavery in the 
Southern States, but that bound up with it was a 
larger issue, that unless the Union abolished 
slavery, slavery would break up the Union. Faced 
by this alternative, he did not shrink, after every 
other method had failed, from vindicating both the 
Union and freedom by the terrible instrument of 
war. Nor after the die for war had been cast did 
he hesitate to call upon his countrymen to make 
sacrifice upon sacrifice, to submit to limitation upon 
limitation of their personal freedom, until, in his 
own words, there was a new birth of freedom in 
your land. 

The American people under Lincoln fought not 
a war of conquest, but a war of liberation. We to- 
day are fighting not a war of conquest, but a war 
of liberation, a liberation not of ourselves alone, but 
of all the world, from that body of barbarous 
doctrine and inhuman practice which has estranged 
nations, has held back the unity and progress of the 
world, and has stood revealed in all its deadly 
iniquity in the course of this war. In such wars 
for liberty there can be no compromise. They are 
either won or lost. In your case it was freedom 
and unity or slavery and separation. In our case 
military power tyrannously used will have suc- 
ceeded in tearing up treaties and trampling on the 
rights of others, or liberty and public right will have 
prevailed. Therefore, we believe that the war must 



MESSAGE TO AMERICA 29 

be fought out to a finish, for on such an issue there 
can be no such thing as a drawn war. 

In holding this conviction we have been inspired 
and strengthened beyond measure by the example 
and the words of your great President. Once the 
conflict had been joined, he did not shrink from 
bloodshed. I have often been struck by the growth 
of both tenderness and stern determination in the 
face of Lincoln as shown in his photographs as the 
war went on. Despite his abhorrence of all that 
war entailed, he persisted in it because he knew that 
he was sparing life by losing it, that, if he agreed 
to compromise, the blood that had been shed on a 
hundred fields would have been shed in vain, that 
the task of creating a united nation of free men 
would only have to be undertaken again at even 
greater cost at some later day. 

It would, indeed, be impossible to state our faith 
more clearly than Lincoln stated it himself at the 
end of 1864. 

On careful consideration of all the evidence, it seems to me 
that no attempt at any negotiation with the insurgent leader 
could result in any good. He would accept nothing short of 
severance of the Union — precisely what we will not and can- 
not give. His declarations to this effect are explicit and oft 
repeated. He does not deceive us. He affords us no excuse 
to deceive ourselves. . . . Between him and us the issue is dis- 
tinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can only be 
tried by war and decided by victory. 



30 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

That was the judgment of the greatest states- 
man of the nineteenth century during the last great 
war for human hberty. It is the judgment of this 
nation and of its fellow-nations overseas to-day. 
"Our armies," said Lincoln, *'are ministers of good, 
not of evil." So do we believe. And through all 
the carnage and suffering and conflicting motives 
of the Civil War, Lincoln held steadfastly to the 
belief that it was the freedom of the people to 
govern themselves which was the fundamental issue 
at stake. 

So do we hold to-day. For when the people of 
central Europe accept the peace which is offered 
them by the Allies not only will the Allied peoples 
be free as they have never been free before, but the 
German people, too, will find that in losing their 
dream of an empire over others they have found 
self-government for themselves. 



CHAPTER IV 

GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 

March 6, 1917. When I joined the Berlin con- 
tingent at Madrid, I brought the optimism of a 
recent visit to the British front with me. I felt 
sure that with the advance of the season the nibbling 
would develop until a battle should rage along the 
whole line from the channel to Switzerland. I 
found among the Berlin crowd men who had been 
on the German front a few yards to the eastward 
of where I had been on the British lines, not for 
a few days, but for weeks. They spoke with 
knowledge and authority, and they said that the 
optimism of the English was the optimism of the 
amateur. The Germans were dug in and con- 
creted; their subterranean fastnesses were chan- 
neled and connected; they had communcation and 
transport and every facility for beating off an at- 
tack. I confess that I was, and am, somewhat 
staggered by what comes to me with such authority. 

But the news wirelessed to the Infanta Isabel 
these past few days indicates that the British confi- 
dence may not be misplaced. Eleven miles by two 
deep with three lines of trenches looks like business. 

31 



32 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

"Let us wait and hear the cost," say the men who 
know Germany's strength. "In the thirty kilo- 
meters between the present Enghsh line and Cam- 
brai there are seventeen lines of defense, with three 
trenches to each, or fifty-one trenches, all with dug- 
outs, subways, and transportation. If the English 
take this area, the cost will make it a losing opera- 
tion. They will be making with the Germans a 
ruinous swap of irreplaceable life for valueless 
land." We shall see. 

When all the careful preliminaries have been at- 
tended to and when the coveted white pass has ar- 
rived from general headquarters in France, which 
alone has authority to select those who are to visit 
the front, the person so favored is told what train 
to catch at Charing Cross, what boat to take at 
Folkestone, and what officer to be on the lookout 
for at Boulogne. 

My train was the 11 :15 a. m. Three minutes 
before train time a guard yanked my hand luggage 
out of the compartment, which a prudent punctual- 
ity had preempted, informing me that as the train 
had been canceled, there would be no channel cross- 
ing, owing to the fog. A different train was leav- 
ing on another track, and being an American and 
alive to possibilities I boarded that and went to 
Folkestone, anyway. It was a tight squeeze to get 
in at the hotel; at the office they strongly advised 
my returning to London ; there had been no channel 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 33 

crossing for four days. Meanwhile the Germans, 
according to the gossip, had undoubtedly sown the 
channel thick with mines, and there would be no 
crossing for several days after the fog lifted, to give 
the mine sweepers a chance to clear the lane. As 
a fact, three days' extra leave had been given to 
soldiers waiting at Boulogne, which tended to bear 
out the foregoing. 

All the same, I stayed. The next morning, when 
I came down at 9:15, as a chance shot I asked the 
lift boy if there would be a boat that day, and the 
reply came back, "Yes, sir, at a quarter to ten." 
I didn't stop for breakfast, but packed up, and 
made a rush for the boat. 

The Onward, which I recognized as an old friend 
of peace time, was packed with soldiers, who came 
marching aboard to the popular airs played by their 
bands. The first thing every one did was to put 
on a life-preserver. In twenty-odd Atlantic cross- 
ings I had never before made the acquaintance of 
one. I got a jolly good breakfast of cold meats 
and coffee in the Onward' s restaurant, and sharp at 
ten we steamed out. 

The sweepers had been at work two abreast. 
We had aU kinds of craft as escort. Every one 
knew that danger lurked about. It was a thrilhng 
passage. I didn't sit down once; I couldn't, for 
there was no place to sit, but it never occurred 
to me to be tired, there was so much to see. I 



34 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

moved about among the men, talking with them 
and getting their point of view as far as I could. 
But the most interesting thing of all was the con- 
voy. The destroyers threshed about, zigzagging 
like di'unken men on a sidewalk. All the boats 
moved swiftly, the destroyers each leaving a boil- 
ing wake and carrying a "bone in their teeth." 
Two other boats, packed to the gunwales, followed 
the Orvward, taking advantage of the same escort. 

We backed in to the familiar dock at Boulogne, 
and there an army captain met me in a limousine, 
and drove me to general headquarters. 

It is difficult to know precisely what to tell of a 
visit of this kind, without violating hospitality. 
Besides, there is nothing that I could describe that 
has not already been better described by the 
splendid fellows who from day to day, at great 
sacrifice and often with much danger to them- 
selves, are wi'iting the story of this war. My story, 
in so far as it is a story, is that of a new pair of 
eyes barely glimpsing scenes long since made 
familiar to newspaper readers all over the world. 

I wanted to pick out something that was of 
particular interest on our side of the water and that 
had not been done to death ; so I asked to be taken 
to that part of the front occupied by the Fourth 
Canadian Division. I knew something of the gen- 
eral in command of this division. In the first place, 
he was a newspaper proprietor. His paper is 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 35 

"The Quebec Daily Clu*onicle." At the outbreak 
of the war, Lieutenant-Colonel D. Watson, he was 
taking quite an interest, mainly civic, in what in 
Canada corresponds to oin* militia. With his 
battalion, he sailed immediately for England, arriv- 
ing there in September, 1914. 

These men had been playing at soldiering, but 
they knew virtually nothing about it expertly. 
After six months' training they went to France. 
In April, 1915, they were blooded on Hill 60 near 
Ypres, when they relieved the French, who, brave 
as they were, turned away from the fii'st experience 
of poisoned gas and stumbled to the rear. The 
epic of the Canadian stand at Hill 60 was written 
by Max Aitken, who the other day became Lord 
Beaverbrook in the English peerage. That stand 
will live in history with the charge of the six 
hundred. It required quite as much courage and a 
good deal more presence of mind. Watson got a 
brigade after Ypres. A year later he became a 
major-general. When I arrived at his head- 
quarters I was interested to notice that at the en- 
trance to the typical, small French villa there hung 
an instrument labeled "gas alarm." Thi'ce miles 
back of the first-line trenches it is necessary to have 
this protection against surprise. Colonel Ironside, 
a Highlander from the very top of Rosshire, showed 
me up to the general, from whom I got a genuine 
American welcome. I found later that the general 



36 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

maintains his Americanism to the extent that he 
has not learned to join in the tea-drinking. I knew 
then that he was sincere in what he told me, as we 
sat out this function, about his fellow-feeling for 
Americans. 

After we had talked a while, General Watson 
and one of his aides drove me out to the front, 
and under his personal escort I made a visit to the 
trenches. It was Hke a visit to America, for the 
general had easy, personal relations with all his 
men, and American was the language of those 
trenches. There was none of the stiffness which 
belongs to the European system. We passed the 
cemetery of Carency, where many French lie 
buried. That was the bill for the French captm-e 
of the sector landmarked by the Lorette ridge and 
the Souchez sugar refinery, near which our walk 
through the trenches took us. 

It was a dull day. There was a desultory firing 
back and forth, and shells were whistling over and 
bursting around us. The "whizz-bangs" impressed 
me most, although it was difficult to believe that 
there were possibilities of personal damage in any 
of them. Now and then a section of trench had 
been obliterated by shell fire, and you had to crawl 
through a sea of fresh-made mire, which sucked the 
top-boots off your feet. The trenches were waist- 
deep in watery mud. The general raced along, 
sure-footed as a cat on the back fence, while I 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 37 

slipped and slid on the lattice-work which formed 
the foot-path, a misstep from which meant a bath 
in the trench soup. 

A walk back through a mile or two of communi- 
cation trench rejoicing in the name of Cabaret, 
brought us out on a road at a point which seemed 
to me well back on the lines. I was frankly re- 
lieved in body and spirit to reach tlie open ground 
again and said to the general that this was probably 
safe country. "Oh, yes," he replied cheerfully, 
"but when I came out here yesterday at this very 
point, there lay a soldier freshly dead. A shell had 
caught him as he walked along this road. 

"What you have seen will doubtless make you 
think that the life of a soldier, specially during the 
spring thaw, is an intolerable one, but men ac- 
custom themselves to it," said General Watson, who 
is a philosopher as well as a soldier. "Human be- 
ings in youth put off and on habits of body and 
mind as readily as they do a suit of clothes. In 
the conditions you have been seemg there is a re- 
turn to the elemental. Men do not think of danger 
or death, or even for a moment of home and loved 
ones. Food and rest become the subjects upon 
w^iich the thoughts dwell." 

As General Watson made these observations he 
maintained a kind of dog-trot a few paces ahead 
of me. I could only keep up by breaking into a 
run now and then, specially as my steel helmet. 



38 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

worn as a protection from shells, gave me some 
trouble, and it was necessary to slow up now and 
then to readjust the chinstrap. The general's gait 
reminded me of the wolf's as I had seen it on the 
Texas prairies. He did n't seem to be going fast, 
and it added to my difficulties that the walk had 
rather winded me. He proposed an extension of 
our promenade to another part of the front; but 
I did n't want to overtax his hospitality. 

''Well," said he, "I '11 tell you what I '11 do. 
We 've got a raid on for to-night, and I '11 let you 
go out in the rear of it, as it will give you a chance 
to see something real." I thanked him, but replied 
that Times Square "looked pretty good" to me, and 
that, as a matter of fact, I was n't so j^oung as I 
looked. 

Well, when we got back to the car, I climbed 
in a bit stiff; to sit down had never before seemed 
such a luxury. After a few restful moments I re- 
gained the courage of my curiosity. I asked the 
general about his soldiers. 

"When we got here," said he, "maybe we were n't 
much good, but we were as good as anybody else. 
War was a new game; even the trained men had 
to begin again and learn their A. B. C.'s. There 
was the equality and fraternity of ignorance." 

"Who are the best of the soldiers now?" I 
asked. 

There was a lurking smile in his quiet, gray eyes. 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 39 

and I imagined that he was thinking of the kilted 
men of his motherland or of his own brave 
Canadians, but this is what he said : 

"The bravest soldier in the world is the English 
officer. I salute him. There is none other like 
him. He does n't need to lash himself into a pas- 
sion to get out one hundred per cent, of his courage. 
He will walk right up to death twirhng his cane. 

"The fact is," continued the general, again 
dropping into the philosophical vein, "that men of 
our race, whether in England, Canada, or the 
United States, while equal to any other in patriot- 
ism, are dominated by the spirit of adventure. It 
is what is sometimes called sporting instinct that 
brings us across the seas to the scene of danger." 

When in the evening I told the English officers 
of the Canadian's tribute to them, they almost 
violated the rule of a lifetime, that every show of 
feeling must be sternly repressed. 

General Watson was strong on two things ; that 
Fritz had lost his morale, and that the British forces 
had just begun to develop their full fighting spirit. 
He was serenely sure of his Canadians, and his eyes 
danced as they surveyed on the map the two 
thousand yards of front that had been turned over 
to three Canadian divisions on the firing line, the 
very hottest corner that could be picked out and, 
therefore, just to their liking. 

I honestly believe that those sports of England 



40 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

and Canada would be tremendously disappointed 
if the Germans on their own should pick up and 
move back thirty miles without a struggle. They 
want to dig Fritz out of his hole. They want to 
have a go at the chemical attack. They have a 
theory that the much vaunted dug-out where Fritz 
has hid himself and planted his guns is precisely 
the trap in which the English hunter can run his 
quarry to earth. They are bursting with the spirit 
of novelty in regard to their new five-inch and 
seventeen-inch guns. They want to try out Fritz 
a bit more at the point of the bayonet. 

We went back to headquarters, where the others 
drank tea while General Watson and I talked war 
and journalism. He asked me about newspaper 
conditions and for the first time learned the price 
of print paper in America. He had literally not 
had time or heart to acquaint himself with matters 
of such vital personal importance. I hated to leave 
this gallant gentleman of my own craft. His 
fellowship and sympathy brought home to me more 
than ever before that on these bloody fields our own 
battle for liberty, our habits of thought and speech, 
our kind of honor and manhood, was being fought 
for.^ Watson cheerily assured me as we drove 
away to G. H. Q. that he would see me in Times 
Square within a year or so. 

1 Something like this actually happened only a few days later. 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 41 

Tliat same evening I went with Captain Fowler 
to the chateau in the neighborhood, where the in- 
telligence department is established under the 
capable superintendence of Colonel Wilson. Here 
live the seven newspaper men who tell the world 
about the war. After a merry dinner I had a 
chance of making the further acquaintance of these 
war correspondents. Two of them, Small of the 
Associated Press, and Sims of the United Press, 
are from Atlanta. I was much interested, of 
course, in Philip Gibbs, the briUiant correspondent 
with whose descriptions the "Times" readers are 
familiar. His genius is recognized by all his 
colleagues. Another interesting fellow is Mon- 
tague of the "Manchester Guardian," who overcame 
the age disqualification for service by painting his 
white hair raven black. He has j ust been promoted 
to a captaincy. Russell is the Renter man, while 
Filson Young looks after the Northcliffe interests, 
and Tomlinson represents "The London Daily 
News." Cars are furnished to these men by the 
Government, but they pay for the upkeep. The 
correspondents are constantly on the front, and the 
press is most fortunate to have such capable rep- 
resentation. 

I thought I had already seen mountains of muni- 
tions, miles of lorries, countless marching soldiers, 
but it was only when I went to the Somme front 
proper that I saw the real thing. From Albert 



42 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

to Pozieres and thence to Contralmaison, Mon- 
tauban, Mametz, and Trone Wood, the scenes wit- 
nessed on February 24 would have challenged de- 
scription by Sir Walter Scott. The day was not 
one for either air-planes or guns, and the trenches 
were comparatively quiet. It was just as ioggy as 
it could be to be so rainy, and raining as hard as 
it could be to be so foggy. On the tops of the 
hills the roads were knee-deep in mud and water, 
but the macadam was hard underneath it all, and 
through the muck there swarmed such a press of 
men and machinery as perhaps had never been seen 
before in all the history of the world. 

Through the mire, rain, and fog, in as desolate 
a picture as lust of power ever drew, the fresh men 
marched blithely to their stations in the trenches. 
The contrast between the soldier who came out and 
the one going in was vivid. You could get a smile, 
by giving him one, from every man marching to 
certain distress and suffering and possible death; 
but the men coming back thought only of rest and 
very little of that, for they were dead on their feet. 

The impression that I got from these scenes was 
that the late general, who remarked that "war was 
hell" was just talking through his hat. He did n't 
know anything about it. Onlj'" around Bapamne 
and places like it, in this nineteen hundred and 
seventeenth year of the Christian era, has the devil 
staged his real show on this planet, and if I may 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 43 

enlarge the metaphor, it is not alone the kaisers 
who have heeii the advance agents and managers. 
They would have been powerless without the 
unconscious cooperation of the spuriously pious, 
like the Haldanes and Ramsay MacDonalds of 
England. The same breed are working over- 
time to help open the doors of America to the hell 
of war by weakening our manhood and thus render- 
ing us helpless. 

July 17, 1917. Not far from IBtaples are located 
several American hospitals that have rendered ex- 
ceptional service to the British forces. The group 
includes the Northwestern University unit, with 
two thousand beds; Harvard, with two thousand, 
four hundred and Base Unit No. 5, with eighteen 
hundred. The latter is the one with which Dr. 
Harvey Gushing of Harvard, among others, is 
identified. There are ten thousand beds altogether 
in these hospitals. Major Clark Collins of the 
United States Army is in general charge. Con- 
sidering the conditions, the hospitals are run 
splendidly. Though they have no sewer system, 
they are kept fresh as paint and thoroughly sani- 
tary. Each hospital is receiving a daily average 
of about one hundred new patients. Trench fever 
comes next to wounds in supplying cases. Trench 
foot, which used to be so troublesome, has been over- 
come by preventive treatment, 



44 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

We had a peep into a machine-gun school, 
where the advantages of the various guns were 
explained. The Lewis gun is in high favor owing 
to its light weight, about twenty-five pounds. It 
fires forty-eight bullets and is most effective at five 
hundred yards, though it will carry one thousand. 
The Vickers is much heavier, but does its work at 
a range of twenty-eight hundred yards and fires 
two hundred and fifty cartridges. Machine-guns 
now furnish part of the barrage-fire. 

A tank school was one of the show things, and 
one of the much described monsters was in action, 
greatly to the wonder and anuisement of the 
visitors. A fine body of troops marched past ; they 
were tank men. Our captain said that theirs was 
the most heroic service, as death by burning was 
their almost inevitable fate. When I mentioned 
this to an infantry lieutenant he smiled in a superior 
way. 

VICTORY SPIRIT ON BRITISH FRONT 

Saturday, September 29, 1917. Never before 
have I found conditions so favorable on the British 
front as they appeared this week. A fortnight ago 
London began to show restlessness at the suspended 
movement east of Ypres, and a portion of the press 
was demanding an explanation from Field-Marshal 
Haig. He gave it in the action that began on the 
Menin Road on the twentieth. 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 45 

The effect of that and other favorable develop- 
ments turned London optimistic, but on the battle- 
front there is a quiet solid confidence that will not 
be changed by the ups and downs of the British 
offensive. There is no under-estimation of the 
German Army, but among officers and men alike 
exists the calm assurance that the enemy calls 
arrogance. Tliey feel that they have Fritz's 
measure at last, that they have learned all his tricks 
and adapted the best of them to their own use. Be- 
fore they go into action nowadays every detail is 
rehearsed over and over again. Not only every 
squad, but every man knows exactly what to do. 
The barrage is timed to the minute, and they make 
the fullest use of its protection with minimum 
danger to themselves. 

I saw a division headquarters field war vaudeville 
including the following features: 

Almost immediately overhead captive balloons 
were observing the Boche lines, about four miles 
distant. The German guns were firing at the bal- 
loons, and black splotches left by the bursting shells 
were always visible, while the sound of shrapnel 
falling to the earth was plainly audible. A Ger- 
man air-plane suddenly came out of the northeast 
and attacked one balloon with a machine-gun, bring- 
ing it down, the pilot di'opping in a parachute and 
escaping unhurt. The British anti-aircraft-guns 
opened fire promptly, but the German got away. 



46 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

It was Satui'day afternoon and sports, includ- 
ing polo and base-ball were in full swing; they were 
not interrupted. To-day a short distance behind 
the hottest portions of the line thousands of men 
who may take part in to-morrow's attack at dawn, 
and who know it, enjoy the Saturday sports as light- 
heartedly as if this were an old-time London week- 
end. And, indeed, the war has settled down into 
an immense business. The novelties and surprises 
have all been exploited or exploded ; the inequahties 
of military expertness have been evened up, and 
the war changes are now measured by weights. By 
the inexorable test of numbers and machinery the 
German Army faces defeat in Flanders, and 
British confidence in the sure result gives a peculiar 
zest to to-day's sports on the divisional fields. 

PILL-BOX SMASHING, JOY TO CANADIANS 

I am just back from the British front. I did n't 
see a single long face there. Even among the 
Tommies, who on previous visits seemed to show 
traces of trench fatigue and hardship, I saw only 
contentment and expectancy. It may have been 
partly the weather, which was fine, or because I 
was thrown mostly with the cheery Canadians. In 
the main, however, I think the gi'eatly improved 
tone was due to the solid improvement in the posi- 
tion at the front. A great confidence has spread 
among all troops since the solving of the riddle of 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 47 

the pill-boxes. Everybody believes now that even 
if the cunning Boche should put out something new, 
there would be again a solution. 

After three or four visits to the Lens neighbor- 
hood I am beginning to feel very much at home 
there. One of the most historic areas of the whole 
war is that through which flows the small stream 
dignified by the name of Souchez River. For the 
comparatively small territory drained by this spring 
branch, as we would call it in the South, the Allies 
have paid a price of hundreds of thousands of lives. 
As I stood near the ruins of the Souchez sugar re- 
finery I had a broadside view of the ridge of Notre 
Dame de Lorette, taken by the French from the 
Germans — who had it thoroughly intrenched and 
gunned — with only the rifle and bayonet. It was 
costly, but it had to be done. Turning to the east, 
one sees within a mile the slope of the famous Vimy 
Ridge, where the best blood of Canada was spilled 
to drive the Germans out of a key position. A mile 
or two beyond the summit are the Labyrinth, Neu- 
ville St. Vaast, and to the northeast is Vimy 
village. The environs of Lens are also visible. 
The famous Souchez Wood, which consists only of 
dead trees and stumps, was filled with soldiers 
cutting and sawing wood for winter use. They 
told me that the tree-trunks and limbs were so full 
of shrapnel that it often broke the saw teeth. 

This part is teeming with Canadian soldiery. 



48 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Day and night it is raucous with the sounds of 
war. Enemy shells are shrieking through the air 
and bursting at uncomfortable distances, and the 
Allied cannon reply with sharper reports. Nobody 
pays any attention. War is a settled business, 
and every one is too much absorbed in the routine 
of it to think about personal danger. 

I spent a good bit of an afternoon walking about 
on the top of Vimy Ridge. Taking it from the 
Germans was a wonderful — on the face of it, an 
impossible — feat. The general who had me in 
tow said: "I never could understand why the 
Boche let us push him off this ridge. It never 
seemed to me that he had to." 

The hill ends in an abrupt slope to the north- 
east, affording perhaps the best observation point 
between Arras and Kimmel Hill, at Messines. 
We stood and watched the show — a very little one 
from the military standpoint, but indescribably 
wonderful measured by what we used to think in 
peace days — for almost an hour. The whole Lens 
landscape lay before us, the enemy front-line 
trenches within two miles of us. The electric sta- 
tion and the slag heaps, which have been fought 
over so fiercely, were well within view. The 
enemy was keeping up an energetic fire on the 
Canadian trenches in front of us and the observa- 
tion balloons behind us. We counted a hundred 
shellbursts in and about Vimy, about a mile from 




BRITISH TROOPS DISEMBARKING AT A FRENCH PORT 




ARRIVAL OF GENERAL PERSHING AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER 



GLIMPSES AT THE FRONT 49 

us, at the foot of the ridge. There must have been 
thirty shots at the observation balloons, whose task 
of watching him seemed to infuriate Fritz. A 
squadron of English planes of Gotha type flew over 
us at an altitude of about twelve thousand feet 
and looking like white pigeons. 

One balloon was the object of concentrated at- 
tack, and the observer was compelled to take to 
his parachute, as the Germans seemed to have the 
range, and shrapnel was bursting all around. We 
were at least two miles nearer the German guns 
than were the balloons, and we could hear the 
shrapnel falling all around, with an occasional 
shell-burst in the vicinity to make us understand 
that we were technically "under fire." 

They told me in Northern France that a census 
of horses and mules in the British Army would 
show at least half a million head. Three inferences 
seemed to me to be clear. The first was that the 
motor has n't driven out horseflesh by any means ; 
the second was that cavalry is coming back to some 
extent — which was confirmed by streams of it seen 
on the roads, — and the third was as to the size of 
the British Army in France. If any one knows 
the figures he declines to tell; so a guess from the 
number of horses — a very rough process, one must 
confess — is about as good as any other. 

The increasing number of women employed back 
of the front is worthy of remark. One sees scores 



50 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

of women in uniform driving ambulances, and they 
seem to be doing it cleverly. They certainly look 
smart as they flash by. I spoke of that to the 
Tommy who was driving me. He snarled back 
that every one of these female drivers had to be 
helped by a male mechanician. 



CHAPTER V 

THE FLIGHT FROM BERLIN HOME WITH GERARD 

To reach home in comparative safety James W. 
Gerard, the former United States Ambassador to 
Germany, was compelled, in sailorman phrase, to 
fetch a wide compass. When he landed at Havana 
to-day he had traveled fifty-seven hundred miles 
from Berlin, and before New York is reached his 
jom-ney will have been longer than the voyage 
from Shanghai to San Francisco. 

Germany has been a beleagured citj'' under the 
strictest martial law, and only since the Americans' 
departure from Berlin has the world been informed 
correctly of inside conditions. 

Mr. Gerard has preserved all his public records 
and documents. His general knowledge of Ger- 
many is drawn from the best sources. He has a 
retentive memory, a special talent for narrative, 
and a nice sense of humor. His purpose is to bring 
his book out promptly while the matters treated are 
fresh and public interest is keen. 

Mr. Gerard is very matter-of-fact and would be 
the last man to parade a pious purpose, but I think 
that his chief motive is to enlighten America on the 

51 



52 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

European situation and help to make the United 
States a nation instead of a mumbo- jumbo of sec- 
tions, States, and races without national conscious- 
ness or purpose. 

It has been stated in an American magazine that 
the sea currents attract most of the loose mines 
from the west of England, the channel, and the 
French coast, and assemble them just off the north- 
west tip of Spain. It was precisely over this spot 
that the Spanish liner, the Infanta Isabel, plowed 
her way around Cape Finisterre to the Atlantic 
Ocean on the night of February 27. 

Mr. Gerard has been tln-ough an ordeal in Berlin 
almost unexampled in diplomatic history. Friends 
in Berlin, who were in a position to have real infor- 
mation, had given him a Lusitania-like warning 
against sailing from Spain. There were known to 
be spies at his heels in Madrid, and on board the 
ship were special suspects, but as he sat with me 
after dinner that evening off Cape Finisterre Mr. 
Gerard, with the quiet smile that his friends all 
know, talked of the floating mine-field as if it were 
miles away. 

All the same, the former ambassador was near the 
end of his rope when he disembarked at Corunna. 
There is a limit to human endurance, and he had 
reached it. Mrs. Gerard was very anxious to have 
him get complete rest on the voyage, and under 
her skilful management each day had shown an 



THE FLIGHT FROM BERLIN 53 

improvement in the envoy's mental and physical 
state. Mrs. Gerard herself has stood the strain in 
a way that only women can, but she will be glad 
to get back to the rest and relaxation of home. 

Mr. Gerard is a natural diplomat, with manner 
considerate and habits democratic. Each day en 
voyage he gathered the correspondents and trans- 
lated the Marconi messages received by the ship. 
He is a good linguist. When he went to Berlin 
he realized that he must learn German and French 
and diligently took up the study of these languages, 
acquiring sufficient facility in both to hold conver- 
sations and read newspapers, a very un-American 
thing to do, but most useful in enabling the am- 
bassador to hold real intercourse with his fellows 
and keep himself posted on German conditions 
through the newspapers. On shipboard he has 
carried about a Spanish grammar and dictionary, 
putting in his spare moments in polishing up his 
Spanish partly learned years ago in Mexico. 

Mr. Gerard neither drinks nor smokes, and 
spends any idle time in picking up information on 
any subject coming within his orbit, a practice that 
in the long run accumulates a big stock of general 
information. At fifty years he has a boy's interest 
in everything that passes. His mental methods 
are very precise, and he never wanders from his 
point. Such a man ought to go far. 

The ambassador returns home without any per- 



.54 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

manent plans. Either law or his Mexican interests 
might receive his attention, but he will have no 
heart for private matters until his duties as an 
American citizen have been fully discharged. He 
has no solemnity and does not take himself over- 
seriously, but if I judge him rightly, the facts stored 
up in his mind are going to be made fully available 
for the guidance of the United States before Mr. 
Gerard will consider himself free for private activ- 
ities. There will be no grand-stand methods, but 
when he finishes, I predict that many of the present 
uncertainties will vanish. 

Much as Mr. Gerard was honored in Switzerland, 
France, and Spain, his real ovation would have been 
in England, but his decision not to visit London at 
this time did credit to his judgment and taste. 

Barring the subconscious sense of risk and ad- 
venture, the voj^age from Corunna to Havana was 
without incident. The Infanta Isabel is a steam- 
ship of ten thousand tons. She is owned in Cadiz, 
and is usually in the South American trade, but she 
is now engaged chiefly in bringing immigrants from 
Galicia in northwest Spain to Cuba, wliich explains 
the call at Corunna. These immigrants are called 
"Swallows" here, because they return home in the 
autumn after enjoying remunerative employment. 

The Infanta Isabel seemed the best and safest 
ship available when Mr. Gerard got ready to leave. 
The Spanish may be slow in some things, but thig 



THE FLIGHT FROM BERLIN 55 

company saw a profit-making opportunity in trans- 
porting the Gerard party, and went to it like a fire 
department to a general alarm. The fares av- 
eraged about three hundi'ed dollars a berth. Six- 
teen hundred and sixty immigrants pay sixty-six 
dollars a head. They belong to Galicia, the only 
Spanish province where willingness to work is gen- 
eral among the population. 

When we boarded the Infanta Isabel we found 
that she carried seventeen life-boats rated by the 
Company as capable of carrying fifty each, or a 
total of eight hundred and fifty. As the total num- 
ber of persons aboard was two thousand, at the 
very best over eleven hundred persons would have 
had to be abandoned in case of accident. 

Optimism and geniality prevailed in the saloon, 
but there was some anxiety at the back of every- 
body's head. Fritz is a crazy fellow on the sea, 
and there was no knowing what might happen if 
war were declared on the voyage. 

One day a rumor spread that the course of the 
ship had been suddenly altered to avoid a raider, 
the new Bloewe, reported near by a passing steamer. 
Discussion brought out the fact that several Amer- 
icans on board the ship knev\^ the commander of 
the Moewe, Count Dohna, personally. They had 
a high regard for him, and believed that he would 
behave gallantly if we fell in with him. 

One vexation of the voyage was the unsatis- 



56 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

factory wireless news. We were left absolutely in 
the dark as to the extent of the loss of life on the 
Laconia and whether the sinking constituted a casus 
belli. 

The adjournment of Congress was reported, but 
there was nothing definite about any delegation of 
power to the President. 

The German scheming to entangle INIexico, which 
was apparently tantamount to a declaration of war 
against America by Germany, got us excited. 

After discussing the situation in Germany for 
eleven days, my conclusion is that the shortage of 
food is more serious than has been believed outside. 
The present condition is not one of actual starva- 
tion, but there is much suffering in spots, and Ger- 
many faces a crisis between now and harvest. Un- 
less the submarine war prospers, Germany can 
hardly escape an upheaval. 

One doctor on board the ship tells me that even 
with his unusual facilities he was much reduced by 
the lack of fats, and when he reached Zurich he was 
so ravenous that he made himself ill by devouring 
everything greasy. Lack of fats caused an in- 
cessant gnawing, and nothing would "stick to his 
ribs." His stomach had no food reserve, and in- 
testinal digestion was suspended. 

The misery resulting from the food conditions 
is observable in every face. The Government took 
all possible precautions, but while sixty per cent. 



THE FLIGHT FROM BERLIN 57 

turnips could make bulk, it could n't make nutri- 
ment. A thick soup of cabbage and turnips, a bit 
of meat, and a trace of gi'ease could be bought at 
the community kitchens in the cities for six cents 
(thirty pfennigs) and bread at one cent a slice, but 
thirty minutes after eating one was hungry again. 

The diet gave no power of resistance to the cold. 
The Americans who serve as prison inspectors say 
that even with huge furs they almost froze this 
winter. 

Mothers and babies are without milk, and the 
suffering is great. While the effect of the food 
conditions on the public morale is temporarily off- 
set by hysterical loyalty, in the end physical causes 
must prevail over psychological. 

The present semistarvation contrasts with what 
the Americans would consider gluttony before the 
war, when it was not unusual for a prosperous Ger- 
man to eat seven meals a day. The full stomach 
was regarded as the sovereign remedy for all ills. 
The early stages of reduced diet benefited some 
people, but that point has long been passed. 

Throughout these trying times the German 
women have been showing splendid nerve. They 
are taking men's places at manual labor. Many 
assure me that if the women are called, they will 
respond in tremendous numbers, game to perform 
many trench tasks if they do not actually do full 
military duty. 



58 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

The moral and social conditions are entirely un- 
like old Germany. In high society spying and in- 
trigue prevail. Nobody trusts anybody, and con- 
versation is all insincerity and deception. While 
the unwritten law still holds among the nobility, 
the laws regulating divorce are a dead letter. 

Soldiers at the front and wives at home are freed 
from marital restraints. Illegitimate births now 
reach twenty -five per cent, in Berhn, and even more 
in Bavaria, and the percentage is increasing. 

Popular taste on the stage calls for a mui'der in 
every act, and the big theatrical successes reek with 
morbid details. 

The tendencies in Germany to rule womankind 
with a rod of iron have been emphasized by the 
war. Men use women roughly and punish them 
physically for trifling faults. Women are treated 
as recognized inferiors, and they don't resent it. 

Such are some of the effects of baffled militarism 
upon the Germans. They went into this war ex- 
pecting a three months' picnic. The resistance, fol- 
lowed by a threatened defeat, has produced a per- 
versitjT^ that breaks out as described. 

This is not to say that Germany is all bad. I 
have heard stories of some splendid self-sacrifice 
in all circles. Some of the aristocracy voluntarily 
adopt short commons, and potato rations are passed 
to guests in palatial houses by liveried servants. 

German heroism in the army and navy is just as 



THE FLIGHT FROM BERLIN 59 

fine as in any countries, but the curse of centuries 
of militarism is heavy upon the people. Napoleon 
said that "Prussia was hatched from a cannon ball," 
and she is paying the price for what she has inflicted 
upon Europe not only by punishment in battle, but 
in the recoil upon herself of her own savage force. 

One point absolutely free from contradiction 
among the American refugees is Germany's entire 
faith in the submarine. Differences on the subject 
have disappeared, and the people all want the cam- 
paign pressed home regardless of consequences. 
There is not the slightest doubt in Germany that 
within three or four months England will be starved 
into submission. 

The situation in regard to America is very simple. 
The result of the submarine war will be so con- 
clusive, it is argued, that America will not matter. 
Germany does not believe in America's fighting 
inclination or ability. The rupture with the United 
States came as a complete surprise. She has al- 
ways thought that President Wilson was bluffing, 
and that America was afflicted with some sort of 
disability on the fighting side. Never since Mr. 
Bryan assured Ambassador Dumba that the mil- 
itant tone in the early notes was for effect in Amer- 
ica has Berlin believed that President Wilson fully 
meant what he said or would in any circumstances 
go to war. 

Our conduct towards Mexico has tended to con- 



60 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

firm the German theory. The way we handled mil- 
itary activities allayed any Geiinan fear of America 
as a military opponent. As one correspondent put 
it, "When America waited a week for Pullmans 
to send the militia to Mexico, Germany stopped 
fighting one whole day to have a loud laugh." Ger- 
many is glad to get freight-cars with straw in the 
bottom for transporting soldiers. 

The particular American thing that Wilhelm- 
strasse worries about is money. She can get along 
without it by swapping jack-knives with herself, but 
a few billions mean much to England and France 
just at this time. 

Then there are those ten million persons of Ger- 
man stock whom Germany is just beginning to rate 
accurately as Americans instead of Germans. 
When the hysterics over submarines permit the 
thought, Germany cannot help recalling that the 
United States is terribly big with its one hundred 
and ten million population; that it has a useful 
navy; that in ingenuity and industry it leads the 
world ; and that, finally, its action will have a potent 
influence on Entente morale. 

For all this Germany had a clever little scheme 
if only a cog had n't slipped. It was to give Amer- 
ica something to think about on the Pacific. The 
Berlin contingent had previous knowledge of this 
Mexico-Japanese conspiracy, and were keen for de- 
tails when the wireless brought the bare announce- 



THE FLIGHT FROM BERLIN 61 

merit. As one journalist put it at the time, instead 
of really meaning peace when proposing it, "Beth- 
mann's design was a rainbow painted on a drop 
scene which was meant to rise again on a very ugly 
tableau." 

There is an agreement of opinion on this steam- 
ship that if war breaks out, America should make 
war from the word "Go." Germany rehes upon 
American indecision, procrastination, and general 
amateurishness, and will herself cover her prepara- 
tions for the most cruel blow by an outward show 
of reluctance. It is felt that "Hit quick and hard" 
should be the motto. War with Spain and ^Mexico 
furnishes no basis of comparison for action against 
a power that knows the war game backwards. 

Everybody who has seen Germany is praying for 
President Wilson to throw personal and political 
considerations to the winds, open a new book of 
war policy, and, irrespective of partj^ write in it 
the names of the best men in America to help the 
President to use America's vast resources against 
the enemy. To fight Germany with Algers and 
Shafters because such men are friends of the admin- 
istration or because their dismissal would give pain 
is looked upon by Americans returning from the 
European theater as unthinkable. 

England has just dismissed Asquith for waiting, 
and France has relieved glorious old Papa Joffre 
because he was willing to give gi'ound at Verdun 



62 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

if necessary to save precious French lives. Let 
America, say returning citizens, begin at the point 
reached by these countries, instead of incurring huge 
costs in time, money, and men by learning by actual 
experience. At such a time party lines mean no 
more "than boundary lines in Noah's flood." 



CHAPTER VI 

AMERICAN MEN OF THE WAR 
GENERAL PERSHING 

August 14, 1917. It is doubtful if any other 
man has been more in the public eye of Europe 
these last few weeks than General John J. Pershing. 
The English and French public have watched Gen- 
eral Pershing with the interest that centers in the 
head of one of the greatest movements the world 
has ever seen. 

General John Pershing has been a leader all his 
life. He took charge of his father's farm in Mis- 
souri at fourteen years of age, and taught country 
school for three years. He wanted to be a lawyer, 
and refused an appointment to the naval academy 
at Annapolis. At seventeen, while attending the 
State normal school, he determined to enter for 
the examination for West Point. He won against 
sixteen other contestants. He was cadet captain 
and was, and is still, captain of his class. This com- 
bination is still a unique distinction. 

Pershing has constructive abilities of a high order 
as was shown by his work in the Philippines. He is 

63 



64 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

a field soldier, a fighting man with an acknowledged 
superiority for training soldiers. 

Pershing is deeply optimistic. Neither middle 
age nor trial has narrowed or embittered him. He 
has the rare combination of optimism and dignity 
and restraint. One feels his warmth and sympathy 
at the first contact, and the effect is enhanced by 
a certain shyness of manner. He impresses you as 
much by what he refrains from saying as by what 
he says. You feel that he is a man who will not 
"spare his stroke" in action, but will never offend 
good taste. He has that nice balance that is some- 
times more than mental, a combination of good sense 
and right feeling. 

He is a very sincere man. Every officer asso- 
ciated with him swears by his sterling quality. He 
has what is commonly called magnetism. One will 
not often meet a man with more of it than belongs 
to the commander of the American expeditionary 
force. 

Pershing is a name to conjure with in Paris just 
now. To mention the fact of having come over in 
the same ship with him is enough to attract a crowd. 
In a fruit-store where I was buying some cherries 
the proprietress, detecting that I was an American, 
said triumphantly, "Oh, I have seen your gen- 
eral I" I told her I had sailed across the ocean with 
him. Her face expanded into a smile, and she 
emitted a long " A-h-h-h-h !" Then she tried to per- 



AMERICAN MEN OF THE WAR 65 

suade me to accept the cherries as a token of her 
regard for General Pershing in particular and 
America in general. 

General Pershing has a pretty good Imowledge 
of French, enough to read the French papers 
without difficulty. He is naturally a bit timid 
about trying to speak in French, but I suspect 
that he is taking lessons and will soon get back 
what he has forgotten and add some more. He 
has enough French to enable him to take advantage 
of diplomatic opportunities as they present them- 
selves. For example at the Opera Comique last 
night, when in the intermission a toast was offered 
"A VAmerique'' he promptly came back with "A 
notre 'France.^' It was an instantaneous hit to 
"make a marriage," as the French say, between the 
two countries. 

His diplomacy is remarkable. It rests largely 
on a sincere heart and a fine presence. He feels 
just what he acts, and he acts with a natural sense 
of the fitness of things. Another factor in the won- 
derful impression made here is a certain gift of 
soldier-like speech possessed by Pershing. The 
other night at M. Painleve's dinner after the host 
had spoken the diners all looked toward the guest 
of honor. The general turned to Ambassador 
Sharp and said, "Am I expected to say something?" 
M. Painleve heard the question and answered it 
with "Oui, oui." General Pershing rose and spoke 



66 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

a few sentences. They were entirely extempora- 
neous; he never prepares anything. His words 
have been quoted everywhere in private conversa- 
tion and have had a fine effect on the French public. 

As a diplomat, I doubt if he is surpassed in the 
service of any country. He begins with the advan- 
tage of looks, though he has none of the drawbacks 
of masculine pulchritude. If a sculptor were com- 
missioned to make a heroic statue to represent West 
Point, he could n't do better than take General Per- 
shing as his model. Nor is he merely a military 
figure. His personality is equally typical of the 
best American strength and manhood. 

These personal attractions and graces are used 
with a naturalness that won Paris instantly. I 
doubt if there is another man of any race who at 
this moment could bring to bear a greater influence 
on a Paris crowd if occasion should demand it. It 
may be set down as a certainty that in all dealings 
with the French public and in his relations with the 
statesmen and generals the American commander 
will "do his country proud." 

No less promising are what may be called his 
business methods. He is devoted to his work. He 
never tires of the routine and he never worries. He 
is a perfectly healthy, noniial man. There is not 
an iota of morbidity in his composition. 

During the period of misunderstanding and mis- 
carriage in the censorship I had frequent occasion 



AMERICAN MEN OF THE WAR 67 

to talk to him and must have expressed my sense 
of grievance with considerable emphasis. He en- 
couraged me to do so. One day I said to him : 

"General, you have enough responsibilities; I am 
not going to worry you with faultfinding about the 
censorship." 

"Well, if you are letting that idea trouble you, 
dismiss it," he replied with a smile. "I don't let 
anything worry me. I try to do a good day's work, 
and when it is finished, I go to bed. And what is 
more, I go to sleep." 

A wonderful doctrine if a man can only live up 
to it! And General Pershing does absolutely. 
Perhaps it is largely a matter of sound health. 
This is his one sensitive point; he would rather be 
accused of dereliction than be thought ill. 

Perhaps that is a survival of the farmer boy's 
pride of strength. The farmer boy is always 
bobbing up in Pershing. Linn County, Missouri, 
would be proud to see the evidences of her early 
imprint on the man whose farming now consists in 
an occasional look from the window or porch at 
the most beautiful garden in all Paris, for such is 
the garden of the great house that Ogden Mills has 
lent the general. This is a garden, Linn County 
must know, not for vegetables, but for flowers, 
trees, and green grass. It is behind the rue de 
Varenne, in the very middle of Paris. 

General Pershing's don't worry policy is part of 



68 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

a philosophy that he has worked out and that he 
practises in his daily life. He believes in difficulty 
as the very staff of opportunity. A man that could 
chase Villa wliile enduring Carranza and still keep 
his temper and serenity has a right to be consid- 
ered a seasoned optimist. Even war-worn Europe 
seems pretty good after Mexico, of which it has 
been sung: 

More rivers and less water. 
More cows and less milk, 
Further to look and less to see, 

than any other country in the world. 

General Pershing has a right to his view of the 
relation between difficulty and opportunity. If he 
should become a gi'cat general, a co-deliverer of 
civilization from the onset of Hun barbarism, his- 
tory would put him alongside Lincoln and Grant 
in respect to early hardships and their influence on 
his development. 

When the President's address of April 2 reached 
Mexico and was read by General Pershing at his 
headquarters, he could n't restrain his enthusiasm. 
There was no self-seeking in his feeling. He 
hadn't then the faintest idea of commanding the 
European forces. He was deeply stirred by the 
great address when he read its pregnant and elo- 
quent sentences, and jumping to his feet, gave 
his feelings full vent in the presence of the soldiers 



AMERICAN MEN OF THE WAR 69 

and newspaper correspondents who happened to be 
in his headquarters. 

"I 'd rather hve to-day and have some part in 
these great things," he said, "than to have lived and 
occupied the highest station at any previous time in 
history. We are going to estabhsh democratic in- 
stitutions in the world for all time, and every man 
who can have a share, however small, in the work 
may be proud." 

Such is the type of man. Whether he possesses 
the diversified abilities, whether he can be the many 
different kinds of man necessary for carrying on to 
the end, remains to be seen. But he has the gifts 
of diplomacy and organization. 

General Pershing is cautious and considerate. 
He has a good heart and an abundant sense of 
humor. Marshal Joffre said to me: "General Per- 
shing will never do anything rash. He will con- 
sider first and act afterward." You can put this 
over against what an English statesman with Amer- 
ican associations said to me the other day about a 
great executive position, "We want a man for that 
job who is willing to take a chance of spilling the 
beans." 

COLONEL HOUSE 

Colonel House is the son of an Englishman who 
settled in Texas about the middle of the last cen- 
tury. Contrary to the general idea. House is not 
cold and reserved, but unusually emotional. The 



70 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

secret of his success is his self -discipline. He con- 
trols his temper, knows how to wait for things to 
come about of themselves, and brings to the carrying 
out of all his schemes a persistency as amiable as 
it is tenacious. The colonel has learned in business 
and politics that it pays to let the other fellow live. 
Instead of stamping all over him and taking his 
self-respect away, he ministers delicately to his 
vanity. In fact, the colonel is a shrewd student of 
human nature, and it is largely through the use of 
that knowledge that he wins his successes. 

As is well-known. Colonel House is slight of 
stature and very unpretending. Those seeing him 
for the first time are not very deeply impressed. 
He is fond of telling stories illustrating his own un- 
impressiveness. And, by the way, a more frank, 
genial companion, it would be hard to find. 

I rather imagine that he sees the humorous side 
of his own importance and immense activities and 
mentally harks back to the good old days in little 
old Austin. His rule of life would not permit him 
to experience the slightest sense of self-importance 
as the result of the unique role that he is playing. 
That would spoil the game as he desires to play it. 
He practises such rigid simplicity that it almost 
amounts to affectation. What other men com- 
monly do to push themselves to the front he studi- 
ously avoids. If he can dodge an ambassadorial 
dinner, he counts it a point won in his little game. 



AMERICAN MEN OF THE WAR 71 

"Mrs. House comes along to attend the lunches and 
dinners that I am obhged to miss," he said the other 
day. The colonel would much prefer dining alone 
with an old friend and talking about amusing ex- 
periences and old times in Texas. 

The other night, referring to a cablegram that we 
were discussing, he asked me if I expected to send 
it. I replied in the southern lingo that we both 
know: "I done sent it." At that a broad smile lit 
up his gentle face, and he told the story of an en- 
counter between old Bill McDonald and Bat Mas- 
terson. 

"There were some preliminary proceedings of a 
hostile character between the two famous desper- 
ados, and Bat said to Bill, 'Are you trying to pick 
a row with me?' 'I done picked it,' replied Bill, 
his pistol leveled at Bat about three paces away." 
The colonel might himself have been one of those 
mild men who so often were the quickest with their 
guns in the palmy days of the Texas ranger. 

Colonel House has always been rather ostenta- 
tious in his avoidance of orator}^ In fact, if he 
should get on his feet without a manuscript in his 
hand, his tongue would probably cleave to the roof 
of his mouth. He dodged the spectacular meeting 
in the cabinet room at No. 10 Downing Street prob- 
ably because he thought it would be incumbent upon 
him, if present, to act as Lloyd George's oratorical 
"opposite." 



72 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

In Paris, however, the time came when a speech 
was required of him by the proprieties. The oc- 
casion was the final meeting of the conference. He 
had the speech type-written in his pocket, and he 
must have dehvered it with some effort at declama- 
tion, for when he walked into the Hotel de Crillon 
with his son-in-law and secretary, Gordon Auchin- 
closs, the latter remarked, "The colonel has at last 
broken into the oratory class," whereat the colonel 
blushed. 

Colonel House occupied the rooms in the Crillon 
known as the Thomas F. Ryan suite. It is in these 
rooms that the well-known New Yorker always 
lives in Paris. Adjoining is a smaller suite that 
was assigned to Lloyd George. From the prime 
minister's privacy every one was rigidly excluded, 
even his private secretary sitting in the outside hall. 
Contrariwise, Colonel House's reception-rooms 
w^ere overrun with visitors of all kinds including 
representatives of the press. These latter got very 
little except courtesy. The colonel received his 
company in an inner reception-room well guarded 
by secretaries. Mr. Auchincloss was the head of 
the secretarial staff. To use a "darkey" expression 
conveying much, this young man has got "a heap 
of sense." The colonel leans on him and Auchin- 
closs is an ever-present help. Like his distin- 
guished father-in-law, he does not take himself too 
seriously, and sees the humor in everything. 



AMERICAN MEN OF THE WAR 73 

Mrs. House goes along with the expedition 
quietly and helpfully. She is never in the way, al- 
though Colonel House takes her everywhere with 
him. On the journey to the American camp not 
only Mrs. House, but Mrs. and ^liss Sharp, as 
well as the colonel's secretary. Miss Denman, were 
of the party. While at American G.H.Q. an 
officer came up with a spiked hehnet left by a Ger- 
man officer on the battle-field of the Marne, and 
presented it to Mrs. House. It must have been a 
souvenir that she had wanted very much, for she 
thanked the officer again and again. While in- 
specting the training-camp, Colonel House was 
given a rifle, and fired several shots hke an expert. 

At the Crillon, as at other hotels, they give em- 
ployment to wounded soldiers. One, whose bus- 
iness is to stand in front and open carriage-doors, 
has a very pleasing personality. He wears on his 
breast several military medals won in the trenches. 
One day when Mrs. House came out she noticed the 
decorations on this gallant fellow now serving in a 
humble capacity, and immediately stopped and 
came to a salute in front of him. He immediately 
returned the salute and the two stood facing each 
other for a few seconds before Mrs. House entered 
her car. It was a pretty incident, specially as Mrs. 
House thought there were no witnesses. 

December 1, 1917. Lord Northcliffe to-day re- 



74 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

ferred in glowing terms to the American mission 
to the Allied conference and its worth, repeating 
what he said a few days ago about Colonel House's 
wisdom. Concerning the junior members he re- 
marked : 

"The American mission is suffering from the 
right kind of disease, youth. I dare say that there 
are those who would like to see their places filled 
by lean and slippered pantaloons, with long beards, 
but I like youngsters best for results. I have been 
in daily contact with them at the conference, and 
those I deal with are live wires, fully charged. 

"Colonel House has reduced the vast assemblage 
of Allied nations to a series of small business com- 
mittees, and thus hot air was entirely eliminated 
from the start. I cannot reveal the conference se- 
crets, but when I looked at the gilded chamber 
where it first met, and realized that every man was 
loaded with a speech, my heart went out in grat- 
itude to the wise colonel who had dammed the flood. 
As it was, Clemenceau in his opening remarks took 
less than two minutes, and soon our meeting broke 
up, and everybody settled to work." 

NEWTON D. BAKER 

Secretary Newton T>. Baker has created a gen- 
erally good impression among army people, and in 
all circles abroad the talk about him is favorable. 



AMERICAN MEN OF THE WAR 75 

His association with Tom Jolinson in Cleveland, 
his supposed pacifism, and an mifortunate slip in a 
campaign speech combined to start a kind of hue 
and cry against him. Parenthetically, that is a 
kind of American specialty. We laud a public 
man to the skies or sending him hurthng in the other 
direction largely as our mood moves us. Over here 
I find much optimism about Baker. He is re- 
garded as a "comer." His background of radical- 
ism, his imagination, his intellectual quality, and his 
open-mindedness line liim up with men who are 
doing things on this side like Lloyd George and 
Painleve. Incidentally, I have heard from more 
than one source that whatever Secretary Baker's 
bent of mind may have been with regard to the war 
back in Cleveland, in Washington and in new con- 
ditions he is a war man to the hilt. 

From the political point of view his natural bias 
towards liberalism puts him in tune with the pre- 
vailing spirit of the time, and he may cut a good 
deal of figure in public affairs before the war and 
its various consequences pass away. The Bolshe- 
vist storm now raging over Russia will take its 
course, like all other world movements, westward. 
Such men as Mr. Baker, whose convictions are 
rooted in temperament, and who are, therefore, 
deeply sincere and unchangeable and, while sym- 
pathetic with the masses, have intellectual training 



76 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

and social stability, will be fit interpreters of pop- 
ular instincts and aspirations if the movement re- 
ferred to should sweep to America. 



CHAPTER VII 

FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 
MARSHAL JOFFRE 

May, 1917. I doubt if I would have gone to 
the city hall but for one thing. I wanted to see 
what manner of man Marshal Joffre was. His 
photographs and the accompanying descriptions 
have caused most of us to visualize a jovial, ro- 
tund man. I saw a man very different from that, 
and yet I would not be able to point out the dif- 
ference point by point. I think it is mostly a 
matter of eyes. A photograph cannot convey 
subtleties of expression, specially those of the eye, 
and yet they make all the difference. 

A tremendous and spontaneous outburst signaled 
the arrival of the distinguished visitors. I was near 
the rostrum and had a good view. Joffre seemed 
to me to walk with a side-wheel motion, but his step 
was firm and brisk. All the delegation took their 
places standing at the back of the platform, the 
marshal at the left, or north end, of the line. I 
thought I could see him breathing a bit hard from 
the exertion in mounting the outside steps, but if 

he should deny it, I should n't press the point. He 

77 



78 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

saluted in acknowledgment of the applause, and 
at once began to survey the crowd with keen an- 
alytical eyes. He held his red cap with gold em- 
broidery in a gloved left hand. I noted at once 
that he looked somewhat younger than I had fan- 
cied him. He appeared to take careful stock of the 
audience up-stairs and down. When his glance en- 
countered General Leonard Wood, his face softened 
into a smile, but I saw no salutation. 

He has a head that suggests squareness in shape, 
large but hardly massive. I should say that he 
wore a seven-and-one-half hat. He had on the 
usual blue jacket and red trousers, with tan leggings 
and tan shoes — Bluchers, if I may be allowed the 
word. His hands and feet were appropriate to his 
size and weight. I should guess him at two hun- 
dred and twenty pounds, and five feet eleven 
inches in height. He stands up straight and keeps 
his body still. I didn't see him move his feet or 
legs in the course of the whole hour or more, 
but his eyes were restless, and he often wet his lips. 
He showed no embarrassment: he was as uncon- 
cerned as if he had been under fii*e on a battle-field, 
and his smile was not as much in evidence as I ex- 
pected. The waves of cheering made him rather 
shut his lips tighter. When IMayor Mitchel enum- 
erated the list of prominent people who had assem- 
bled, the marshal knitted his brows as if slightly 
puzzled. 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 79 

He has the poise of a great soldier. He stood f or 
minutes together with his cap held behind him in 
his left hand and his right hanging at his side. His 
face is less heavy than it has been pictured. He 
has still enough hair to save him from baldness. 
He has rather deep-set gray eyes, and seems to 
have a slight defect in one of them. It is a droop 
of the lids. Instead of detracting, it adds to his 
impressiveness. I was reminded of Henry Watter- 
son, who, to my way of thinking, is the noblest 
figure that has appeared on the platform in Amer- 
ica in my time. There is a noticeable resemblance 
between the two men. Both have the leonine qual- 
ity. Joffre's complexion suggests the wine of the 
country in moderation. 

He will go down in history as "Papa" Joffre, 
but I should say that gravity and authority are 
stronger than tenderness in the paternal character 
for which he is famous. 

Next to me stood a famous business man who 
has been prominently connected with certain phases 
of the war. I asked him for the reason of Joffre's 
popularity in America. "Foreigner that he is, he 
is almost the idol of the American people," he re- 
plied. "The people of the country appreciate the 
fact that at the Mame Joffre saved civilization." 
My neighbor has stated the simple fact. I began 
to study the figure in front of me with a fresh in- 
terest. He is precisely a man that should have been 



80 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

the hero of the Marne, the greatest battle in its re- 
lation to man's permanent interests that the world 
has ever seen. 

At the moment of greatest peril to the greatest 
number in the history of this planet it was a man 
of Latin race — a man probably without a drop of 
any but Latin blood in him, and yet the very embod- 
iment of sturdiness and poise — who stood forth as 
the leader. For the emergencj'' the man had been 
raised up. The army and the nation rallied to him, 
and a new France was born. 

He did his work, and when the time came to give 
way to those who had not spent themselves, he 
answered the call quietly, as he had done that other 
call in August, 1914. 

And now in obedience to the will of the country 
that he has served so well he comes on this far 
mission. No other man in the world would be 
quite so welcome as he in this country. 

He could scarcely have aroused greater interest 
and emotion if he had still been in active command 
of the French armies. To the American mind the 
prefix "ex" usually conveys disillusion, but Joffre 
has sunk deep into the American consciousness, and 
vicissitudes of rank do not affect the glamor that 
surrounds his name. 

Such a man as Joffre must be appraised by his- 
tory and posterity. His merit on the technical side 
only soldiers can determine. It is in point of 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 81 

character and citizenship that he seems to me to 
merit the greatest measure of esteem and gratitude. 
I was in Europe when the war broke out, and knew 
of the poignant anxiety that came home to Alhed 
countries after the battle of Mons. All who were 
informed as to the facts realized that the Germans 
possessed the only military machine in existence. 
After the sudden fall of Namur it realized that 
nothing short of a miracle could save Paris and the 
channel ports. The English could and did put 
into the field eight divisions of good, seasoned 
troops. The French had a serviceable army in 
point of numbers, and there were generals who knew 
strategy and tactics. The great question was 
whether there was a Man with a capital M among 
them. 

The French are wonderfully responsive to lead- 
ership, and the inquiry in everybody's mind during 
those days of August and September was whether 
the emergency would produce the leader. Out of 
the doubt, the darkness, and the terror of that period 
came Joffre, and the thing about Joffre that stood 
out from the very first was not his generalship 
about which a layman could know little or nothing, 
but his character. He was so different from what 
we had conceived to be the French temperament. 

When we thought of the French we thought of 
grace, power of expression, art, volatility, yes, 
grandiloquence. We believed that glory, or its de- 



82 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

lusion, was more to them than truth. We expected 
to hear from Paris a story of the defeat of Charleroi 
in poesy and martial music, and after the IMarne 
we feared a sudden tumble following the usual self- 
glorification. 

Suddenly in front of France there stood this man 
whom we have been seeing in America. To see 
him, in my opinion, is almost the greatest privilege 
and distinction we have enjoyed since Lincoln's 
day. With beetling brow and keen eye he sur- 
veyed the scene, saw the realities, arranged an or- 
dered plan, put an end to mental confusion, ex- 
orcised the devil of hysteria, and got down to a 
basis of common honesty and common sense as far 
as the army was concerned. 

I remember that after Charleroi or Mons Joffre 
was asked why he suffered defeat there, and by a 
second question he was encouraged to say that the 
Enghsh failed. "The English to blame?" he re- 
plied in effect. "Not at all. They did splendidly, 
giving us much more help on the short notice than 
we had any right to expect." 

"What was the trouble then?" 

"]My own generals. They were inexperienced, 
inefficient. We could n't stand against the superior 
expertness of the enemy." 

"What are you going to do about it?" 

"I have already acted. I 've put those officers 
out and put new ones in." 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 83 

And he had. 

That candor and honesty and utter freedom from 
buncombe in a French general were like a rainbow 
of hope and promise. 

From the beginning to the end of Joffre's com- 
mand there was not, so far as I could observe, a 
single word or act that did not contribute to stabil- 
izing France on the new plane. Though he is ail 
a Frenchman, his traditions and methods are more 
like those we have immemorially associated with the 
British. Not a single exaggerated statement has 
ever come from him. His record has been a con- 
stant and stern reproof to political levity in Paris, 
and an example to those who would be honest and 
faithful. 

It may almost be said that there is no such thing 
as a fact in this war. Censorships have thrown a 
curtain over it all, and it is doubtful if history 
will rescue the whole truth about the war from the 
caves of mystification and contradiction. The most 
prevalent story about Joffre's retirement is that he 
wanted to give gi'ound at Verdun in order to save 
French man power, which had reached exhaustion 
point. Thej'^ thought that the suggestion sounded 
as if he might be getting old and so promoted him 
to Paris. As a matter of fact they but followed his 
own policy. Men are like electric batteries; use 
pulls the **juice" out of them. 

Not one additional fact about the war is needed 



84 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

to assure to Marshal Joffre first place. He not 
only saved civilization, but he remade a nation. 
Joffre is the Father of France in that he instituted 
and established the habit of mind and force of char- 
acter which have raised that country to sublime 
heights of consecration and sacrifice. 

MABSHAL JOFFRE IN PARIS 

July 3, 1917. Marshal Joffre did me the honor 
to receive me to-day at his office in the Ecole 
Superieure de Guerre. The interview was a per- 
sonal one, granted me largely on the score of my 
being an American. 

When I suggested making some extracts from 
the conversation for publication in "The Times," 
the Marshal consented reluctantly and only on my 
plea that their publication might tend toward 
strengthening the ties between our countries. 

Marshal Joffre is an interesting study here as he 
was in America. In his own setting he is an even 
nobler figure than as I saw him at the City Hall 
reception in New York. Yet somehow he seems 
to be apart from the French type as we conceive 
that type. I talked with him through Lieutenant 
de Tessan, who kindly acted as interpreter, and 
I had a chance to observe him closely for nearly 
an hour, sitting vis-a-vis to him at his flat -topped 
desk. 

I wish I could give my impressions without either 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 85 

adjectives or superlatives, to which his moderate 
and thoughtfid personaHty administers silent re- 
proof. He scarcely made a gestm'e. There was 
none of the changes in tone used with such effect 
by the French to give emphasis and significance 
to the spoken word. There was always the same 
restrained use of a very gentle voice. Every one 
in iimerica noted that the marshal often half -closed 
his eyes. That must have been an effort to focus as 
against a defect of far sight. I saw the half-closed 
eyes only once to-day, and that was at the suggestion 
of using the talk as an interview. 

Our appointment was at eleven o'clock, and the 
marshal did not keep me waiting a single minute, 
a promptness unusual in European officialdom. 
He met me with quiet cordiality. When I began 
to ask questions through Lieutenant de Tessan, the 
Marshal was somewhat alarmed and said that we 
could have a much more interesting conversation 
if it was understood that there was to be no inter- 
view. Above all, he would shrink from being put 
in an attitude of telling America what to do or of 
speaking a single word that might be mistaken for 
criticism. 

Knowing that he and General Pershing had 
foiTned a friendship, I introduced our commander's 
name. Marshal Joffre replied: 

"I met General Pershing in America and was at 
once struck by his poise. My acquaintance with 



86 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

him here has confirmed my early impression. 
Forethought and steadiness seem characteristic of 
him. I do not think he would act hastily or rashly. 
He weighs his actions carefulty. Of course he is 
a fine soldier with admirable training. In my judg- 
ment America could not have placed command of 
an expeditionary force in better hands. As Amer- 
ica has put so much of her resources into this enter- 
prise and as she is going to be all-powerful in fin- 
ishing this war, she is particularly fortunate in se- 
curing a leader who thinks before he acts. We have 
talked much together, and I like his ideas on mil- 
itary matters as much as I admire his fine person- 
ality. 

"The arrival of General Pershing and his staff 
made an impression in France of the seriousness and 
strength of America. Now that the troops have 
landed, the impression is renewed and strengthened. 
It shows that you are setting to work in good ear- 
nest. 

"It is a fine beginning. I can only say, keep 
it up, increase the speed, and never stop until you 
have accomplished what you set out to accom- 
plish. The arrival of American troops on time and 
without a mishap reflects credit on your Govern- 
ment, and encourages the belief that the submarine 
does not present a barrier to the transport of troops 
across the ocean which cannot be overcome by the 
organization and utilization of your resources. 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 87 

"All that has happened confirms my judgment 
of America as formed before and during mj'^ visit. 
I was very much impressed by the rapidity with 
which Americans make up their minds and still more 
by their quickness of action afterward. What I 
want to see, what I expect to see, is continuity of 
action on a rising scale, no let up for a single mo- 
ment. The way to win the war quickly is to bring 
to bear every ounce on and behind the fighting line. 
Peace will come tlirough the hardest possible fight- 
ing at the earliest possible moment. With her re- 
sources of men and finance America will strike the 
finishing blow that will bring an end of hostilities. 

"I came back from America convinced of what 
that country was doing and could do. What I saw 
there I repeat now. Bring men here; bring them 
as fast as possible. Train them in trench and other 
European methods here within the influence of 
actual war. That is the one school for a soldier. 
We want men, men, men not only for actual fight- 
ing, but for work of all kinds. It is natural tliat 
the ranks of labor should have suffered depletion 
in these three years. We need men to work on 
roads, men to build and repair railroads, men for 
the telegraph and telephone, men for lumbering, 
men for every sort of labor — not all of it necessarily 
military or militarized, but all contributing as truly 
and honorably to winning the war as the fighting 
itself." 



88 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

The marshal made these points with quiet earnest- 
ness. When he had finished, I asked him what had 
struck him most forcibly in his travels through 
America. He considered a moment and then re- 
plied: 

"The deepest impression, perhaps, was that of 
the combination of the two contrasting qualities 
in the American character. Although the people 
are gi'eat in their material interests and achieve- 
ments, they have lofty and noble ideals. I mention 
two proofs. America comes into this war without 
a shadow of direct material interest, purely to se- 
cure and establish the independence of nations. 
The second proof is the veneration in which those 
who have striven for high ideals are held by the 
people. The names of Lincoln, Washington, 
Grant, and Lafayette are universally revered." 

The marshal showed deep feeling in referring to 
this characteristic of ours that we ourselves take 
much as a matter of course. 

"How do the crowds of New York compare with 
those of Paris, the welcome to you there and that 
to Pershing here?" I asked. 

"They are difficult to compare, they are so dif- 
ferent," said the marshal. "The New York crowd 
can make a greater volume of sound because it is 
bigger. We have been cut down by war. But I 
do not concede that any crowd could feel a deeper 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 89 

enthusiasm than ours on June 13 felt for General 
Pershing." 

I assured the marshal that America would look 
forward to another visit from him. 

"Yes; I want very much to go back after the war 
and take Mme. Joifre with me," he rephed. 

At the end the marshal tried out his English vo- 
cabulary on me. 

*'Good-by," he said, with a hearty handshake. 

I went out through two spacious anterooms, the 
first tenanted by Colonel Fabry, "the blue-devil of 
France," who gave me a cordial, American-like 
greeting. In the second I stopped at a window 
that commands a close view of the Ferris Wheel 
and the Eiffel Tower, and tried to fix in my mind 
a firm impression of Marshal Joffre's personality 
while it was fresh and in some terms familiar. 

The rule that no painting can take its place 
among the immortals of the Louvre until the artist 
is dead applies also to men. History will give 
Marshal Joffre his rating. He seems to me a great 
historic figure, less perhaps for his technical mil- 
itary genius than for his moral and temperamental 
leadership. 

His example and influence set France on quiet 
ways that led to her successful resistance of Ger- 
many's onset. This quietness, bigness, and stead- 
iness are his outstanding characteristics. He has 



90 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

not an iota of self -consciousness or personal vanity. 
The great moral quality in him is enhanced by 
a certain effect of sadness that seems to hover about 
his personality. 

PETAIN 

August, 1917. On the tablelands constituting 
the divide between the waters that flow to Havre 
by the Marne and the Seine on the west and those 
that seek the sea by the Meuse, past Verdun and 
Liege, great leaders have trained their armies for 
thousands of years. It was here that Caesar's le- 
gions were encamped. There is a long hill, with a 
broad flat back, commanding a wide view in every 
direction, that appeals to both the utilitarian and 
artistic sense of the French, and it was here that 
Petain came, bringing Pershing with him, to review 
the famous Alpine Chasseurs Division. 

After the European fashion of weather it was 
a glorious morning. A few fleecy clouds tempered 
the heat of the summer sun and staged the stunts 
of an aviator who brought a brand-new car of a chic 
pattern to put the very last touch of modernity on 
the scene. 

I had not come for the beautiful work of the crack 
division, the perfect marching of the infantry, the 
fine horsemanship of the cavalry, the smooth 
handling of the artillery, the inspiring music of the 
regimental bands, or even the presentation of hon- 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 91 

ors to the heroes, who had earned their laurel wreath 
over and over again. I was interested in General 
Petain and in the comparison between him and the 
other great leaders of the war who had come under 
my observation: Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, 
and Joffre. For it must be remembered that Pe- 
tain is not only a soldier. There may be men upon 
whom are conferred reserve powers greater than 
his. President Wilson, David Lloj^d George, per- 
haps. But in actual power daily and hourly called 
upon, possibly Petain does lead all others, for he 
is the commander-in-chief of the armj'' in the coun- 
try where the war is being fought. 

He was distributing medals when I first saw him. 
A line of men about twelve in number was advanced 
in front of the division formation. A space sep- 
arated them into two groups. An officer read out 
an account of the service to be rewarded in a loud 
voice. General Petain advanced briskly, pinned 
on the medal of the Legion of Honor, or Croix de 
Guerre, touched with alternate cheek the lips of 
the candidate, receiving two hearty kisses audible 
fifty feet away. 

There was a pretty incident in the general's se- 
lection, in pursuance of a right accorded him, of 
one of the candidates for the Legion of Honor. It 
was an extemporaneous judgment based on the 
record read aloud in detail. The recipient was a 
wiry, handsome young sergeant, and the incident 



92 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

spread a wave of pleasure over the whole division. 

My first impression of General Petain was tinged 
with a little shade of disappointment. Men, how- 
ever great, are not gods, once you scrutinize them 
narrowly. Petain might be a business man, a law- 
yer, or a village doctor. I remember having had 
much the same impression of the late E. H. Har- 
riman. I could name half a dozen men who would 
make up acceptably for the part of General Petain, 
and have points of resemblance with him — Frank 
P. Glass, for example, if he were a few inches taller, 
or Frank A. Munsey if he were forty pounds 
heavier. 

General Petain in some ways suggests General 
Leonard Wood. He has ceaseless energy, but is 
neither hurried nor strenuous. He has n't a par- 
ticle of military consciousness. He is one size 
smaller than General Pershing, a shade less erect, 
and immensely less suggestive of military starch. 
Pershing stands like a statue, but Petain is just an 
ordinary, erect, middle-aged man. He has no 
studied or fixed pose, but he is a soldier from the 
ground up. 

He wore the plainest kind of gray uniform, 
riding-breeches, and tan puttees, with three tiny 
stars on each sleeve near the wristband, and a large 
silver medal pinned on his tunic below the left 
handkerchief pocket. 

He has a good, wholesome face. Yet I think 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 93 

it must have been there that I met with the dis- 
appointment referred to. I had pictured him as 
thin-visaged and frowning, with a downward look. 
His face is much plumper than his pictures indicate. 
The prominent nose seems not unlike General 
Pershing's, though there the facial resemblance 
stops. General Petain's chin gives no line to his 
character, as chins are often supposed to do, and his 
head is of average size and shape. His cheeks have 
color, and his brownish eyes are kindly. He means 
well to you, but you must take no liberties. You 
tell that at a glance. He wore brown chamois 
gloves. His hands were frequently in action, but 
there is no extravagance or affectation of gesture. 

I speculated that here was a man that had reached 
middle life without disclosing any kind of greatness. 
He was a colonel, and a lecturer at the war college, 
a good one, no more. The war came and smote 
deep into his nature. It started the springs of 
greatness, which flowed outward in the channels 
that opportunity opened. But all his habits had 
been formed by patterns of mediocrity. There 
were no characteristics struck out by that indul- 
gence of the ego, that self-development which 
genius is privileged to practise from boyhood. 

It therefore happens that Petain is actually as 
plain as an old shoe. He does n't play to the gal- 
leries. You are sure that he is not thinking of him- 
self, not even glimmeringly. His mind is on his 



94 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

number, and it is n't number one. In fact, the im- 
pression he gives is always that of sincerity in what 
he is doing. He does n't do one thing and think of 
another. He is on the job, so to say, every minute. 
If he is pinning on a medal, he is looking at it and 
thinking about that particular medal ; and so when 
he is kissing. I observed that he was careful to 
take the kiss on the cheek. Remember, by the way, 
that this is a French ceremonial kiss and does n't 
mean the same as a kiss does with us. 

Now the military business is over, or at least 
there is an interval between the first and second 
parts, the latter the review proper. What does the 
general do? Go off and take a rest or talk to the 
American generals? Not at all. There are a lot 
of French spectators, some who have suffered re- 
cent losses, and others just villagers, or farmers, 
and their families from the country-side. General 
Petain makes the round of them. And let me say 
right here that I never saw anybody meet people 
better, not even the late President McKirdey, 
whose genuine love for his fellow-man made him 
sincere in his human contact and therefore a good 
**mixer." General Petain must like it or he 
couldn't do it so well as he does. You must 
alwaj^s, here in France, remember that there is more 
of a certain kind of democratic feeling than with 
us. There was no sense in this crowd that they 
were enjoying condescension from a great military 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 95 

grandee, as equally, of course, there was not a 
shadow of thought of its bestowal. Petain kissed 
the babies and shook hands with the grown-ups as 
if he had been brought up to this business instead 
of to soldiering. 

I happened to be among the crowd as the general 
came along. He stopped, shook hands with me, 
and passed the time of day, displaying a lively in- 
terest when I mentioned the name of my paper. 
And I may tell you that he securely fixed my vote 
for any office for which he ever stands when, hours 
later at another place, he remembered me, stepped 
out of the military circle, gave me a real handshake, 
and an "Au revoir." 

General Petain is without a certain mystery and 
magnetism that characterize Joff re ; nor has he the 
avoirdupois. No one else can speak in that soft 
monotone of Joffre's, a tone in which one might 
read a psalm. Petain has fixed his place as a 
soldier. He took over the command in most ex- 
traordinary circumstances of difficulty and splen- 
didly has he made good. 

Such was the commander-in-chief of the French 
as he went about his appointed tasks on the day 
before the latest Verdun attack. Perhaps his re- 
view was in connection with that big offensive. If 
it was, General Petain had gone through all the 
great planning without the effort's having left any 
mark of strain. There was no sign of excitement. 



96 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Here is a man who will attend to all that has 
got to be done, big and little, and then have time 
and energy left over for the unexpected. My guess 
would be that his work is never in arrears. There 
is no feverish haste and, therefore, no lost motion, 
but he is hard at it all the time. At the need of 
France came Joffre, and then Petain. 

PAINLEVE 

June, 1917. Before going to see the minister of 
war I had formed the impression that M. Painleve 
was that rarity in the ranks of science, a great 
mathematician whose genius was not an excres- 
cence, but an integral part, of an all-round, great 
man. When I met him in his office I found him 
unexpectedly young not only in appearance, but 
also in his un jaded outlook on life and war. One 
could not imagine him as the war minister under 
Napoleon, but he fits into the picture of a period 
that, though entirely lacking in supermen, can lay 
claim to supermankind. 

In the anteroom of M. Painleve, the minister of 
war, there is a billiard-table and a rack of cues. I 
did n't learn whether M. Painleve is himself a 
player or whether the outfit belonged to one of his 
predecessors. To see the billiard-table all read}^ 
for play in that anteroom gave a human touch to 
the picture. But I could n't help thinking what 
would happen in our Puritanical America if a 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 97 

Secretary Daniels or Secretary Baker should instal 
cow-boy pool in his anteroom. And yet, if they 
took the time for a little "cow-boy pool" or some 
other game every day, might they not do better 
work on their big problems? 

When I saw M. Painleve, he wore a black cut- 
away coat, a gray cravat with a jeweled pin, gray- 
ish trousers with gray gaiters made into his shoes, 
and purple socks. An impression of plain utili- 
tarian tastes was conveyed by the detachable cuffs, 
which suggested to me that when at work in the 
closet of science he removes them and his coat, and 
hangs them on a convenient peg. 

The minister is delightfully agreeable and frank. 
He is of medium size; his eyes are blue; and his 
hair is brown without suspicion of gray. His nose 
is retrousse, like Yvette Guilbert's, and his com- 
plexion, fresh. He is strikingly boyish for a man 
who has led such a strenuous life in two depart- 
ments, politics and science. 

Painleve is himself a Socialist. He has been re- 
garded for some time as a coming man in French 
politics. In a general way he belongs to President 
Wilson's school, that of the scholar in politics. As 
is well-known, he is a great mathematician. His 
scientific point of view gives him detachment, for 
he looks at the world in a state of war with the 
philosophic calm of one who knows that this planet 
is almost the smallest of its kind in one of the 



98 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

hundreds of millions of solar systems. On the 
other side, he knows that, turning from the tele- 
scope that makes these bodies visible and taking 
up the modern microscope, he can look at the 
smooth surface of his cuff button and see trees 
growing thereon, yea, even worms gnawing at the 
roots of those trees. So why get excited? 

Painleve runs as coolly as a fine high-speed 
engine. He accomplishes much, but does n't seem 
in a hurry. "When I interviewed him there was 
none of the affectation of haste with which an of- 
ficial usually attempts to overawe the representa- 
tive of the press. "How much time can you give 
me, Mr. Minister?" I inquired at the outset. "All 
that you want," was the amiable reply. His is a de- 
lightful personahty. 

While waiting for M. Painleve to return from 
an unexpected conference, I had had a chance to 
look about under the guidance of Sub-Chief Major 
Herscher, and to learn something about the spirit 
and methods of the war office. Under the new war 
administration, as reorganized by M. Painleve and 
M. Ribot, military economics and financial and 
political powers necessaiy for the conduct of the 
war are reserved to the Government itself. The 
powers relating exclusively to the army are put in 
the form of military orders by the general chief 
of staff, who is the medium of communication be- 
tween the minister of war and the conmiander-in- 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 99 

chief and the minister's coadjutor in the execution 
of military matters. Thus militarized, they pass 
into two separate channels, one to General Petain 
for the western front, and the other to General 
San*ail for the eastern front, these two being en- 
tirely separate. 

M. Painleve, who has already made a deep im- 
pression in America as he has throughout Europe, 
is a Socialist Republican. He is not, and never 
has been, an International, that is a socialist who 
puts socialism above his country. He had always 
foreseen a long war and has been a convinced 
jusqu a-hout-ist. He is an idealist who realizes 
his ideals. This has been shown by his quick ac- 
tion in Greece, — and notably, later, in his action in 
sending French troops to Italy — where with Ribot 
and Lloyd George he grasped the nettle of intrigue 
and treachery. 

The first word the war minister spoke to me was 
of President Wilson. He said that the head of 
the American Republic had the enduring esteem, 
affection, and confidence of the French people. 
No one else had put the case for humanity so 
strongly, and action had followed words, though 
there had been a patience and restraint that in 
retrospect of what had passed emphasized Wilson's 
sincerity. 

"Out of all this terrible slaughter there may 
come at least a pacified humanity sated with the 



100 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

war spirit," said M. Painleve, dwelling on the note 
so often struck in the President's messages. 

"One of the most popular questions in France," 
he continued, "is the restitution of Alsace and 
Lorraine. They had always heen properly French 
territory, an integral part of France, one with us 
geographically and in feeling, but one hundred and 
thirty years ago these provinces gave themselves 
formally and irrevocably to France. They are 
ours, and they must come back to us. These 
provinces stand morally on a level with northern 
France and Belgium, where Germany's acts were 
not those of war. Germany stole from factories 
property that belonged to private citizens. Such 
theft does not come in the categories of things for 
which one asks indemnity. It is a matter of re- 
storing stolen property, and on that we shall insist. 

"There can be no compromise on the outrages 
committed at Lille, Roubaix, and Tourcoing. 
And the deportations are crimes that can never be 
expiated." 

Then we took up the subject that lies at the 
bottom of every discussion of American coopera- 
tion, the manufacture of air-planes and the furnish- 
ing of aviators. M. Painleve thought this subject 
one of overshadowing importance, although he, in 
common with every one else, shows the liveliest 
enthusiasm when the talk is of American soldiers 
for the French trenches. 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 101 

Two phases upon which we dwelt were standard- 
isation and the coordination of American with 
French activities. Parts of air-planes, he said, 
should be manufactured and shipped to central 
plants in France just as Ford makes parts in 
Detroit and ships them to Long Island City and 
Boston to be erected into cars. In addition, he 
thought there should be factories for making parts 
in France. The minister believed that the prac- 
tical men associated with the government commis- 
sions in Washington would see right through this 
enormous problem and bring it to a prompt solu- 
tion. His interest in the matter is intense, but it 
is on the battle front rather than in coping with 
submarines that M. Painleve sees the surest utility 
for aviation. 

"It enables you," he said epigrammatically, "to 
have eyes yourself, to put out your enemy's eyes, 
and to deal destruction at points not otherwise 
reachable. Time is the essence of this matter. 
England, America, and France must work together 
here and not lose a moment." 

M. Painleve is a pioneer in the field of aviation, 
and he looks forward after the war to an enormous 
development of air transport that will include 
passenger traffic and light freight, such as mail, 
which he expects to be air-borne from Europe to 
America, and from France to all her colonies. 

He was one of the fii'st passengers in an air- 



102 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

plane, having gone up with Wilbur Wright at 
Auxerre in 1908, and momentarily held both time 
and distance records. He lectured at Commander 
Roch's school on the mechanics of aviation, and in 
the Chamber of Deputies obtained the first credit 
for that service. In 1910 he recommended to the 
minister of war the creation of a flotilla of a 
thousand air-planes in five years, which was thought 
then to be chimerical. He is convinced that 
America can accomplish wonders in this field, but 
deprecates figures that could only be made good 
by a miracle. 

*'We do not expect impossibilities even from 
America," said the minister. 

When asked why Paris enjoyed immunity from 
air raids, a question asked frequently in America, 
M. Painleve suggested the obvious fact that over 
the battle lines the French and English air-craft 
form an almost impassable barrier. German 
cities, for the most part, were similarly protected, 
and reprisal on Germany for raiding England was 
thereby rendered very difficult. I was reminded 
of what M. Reinbach told me, that England's re- 
prisals were "bosh in two senses." 

When I asked for a pronouncement on the Rus- 
sian situation, M. Painleve said: 

"The news now coming from Russia through M. 
Albert Thomas and Mr. Root may be regarded 



FRENCH MEN OF THE WAR 103 

as favorable, and encourages the optimism I have 
felt on the subject." 

M. Painleve having answered all my questions, 
I asked if there was not some message peculiarly 
his own that he could give me for America. 

*'Yes," he promptly rephed. "At the beginning 
something was said here that touches the sensitive- 
ness of Americans. The remark was that when 
you came in we could send back the old classes 
from the trenches. It touched the American spirit, 
and from some quarters there was a response, 
'What! are we just to fill up the gap made by the 
withdrawal of old men?' 

"Let me say that if in the course of five or six 
months you gave us one hundred thousand, two 
hundi-ed thousand, what number you will, of 
splendid American soldiers, we would withdraw 
from military service such men as could be spared 
and would cost us the least sacrifice of strength 
there, and restore them to the economic life of 
France wherein age does not carry with it a cor- 
responding degree of deterioration. We should 
thus derive the greatest possible net gain from the 
generous aid of our American ally: and a gain for 
one is a gain for all. 

"Another matter I will touch on is the value of 
your aid in reconstructing our railroads. This help 
is in no sense less valuable than that in the trenches, 



104 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

and those who work on our transportation lines 
serve France and the Allied cause. We hope for 
American speed and efficiency in this reconstruc- 
tion, and if it would appeal to your pride of 
superiority in railroad building, we would be glad 
to set aside a particular railroad for American 
engineers and workers. 

"One word more," said M. Painleve, his face 
growing grave. "In the name of France I want 
to thank the American nation for those who came 
to us in advance of any declaration — doctors, 
nurses, aviators, soldiers, and ambulance men, many 
of whom have given their lives." 



CHAPTER VIII 

BRITISH MEN OF THE WAE 
THE RT. HON. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 

January, 1917. I say at the start that this is 
neither a character sketch of the prime minister 
nor a report of the big meeting held at the beautiful 
and historic Guildhall. 

Mr. Lloyd George took his welcome very quietly, 
showing but a trace of response as he stood at the 
rail of the platform. The crowd sang "For he 's 
a jolly good fellow," but the song limped, and the 
performance was more spiritless than the same 
thing would have been in New York. Then Mr. 
Lloyd George sat down next to his little daughter, 
a pink-cheeked girl, who had come with Mrs. Lloyd 
George a few minutes before. The wife of the 
prime minister wore a black hat, with a plume and 
a gold buckle, and a velvet wrap trimmed with fur, 
and a collar of muskrat. She had on a dark silk 
frock and white gloves with black stripes. She is 
a large, wholesome-looking motherly woman. 

When the prime minister took his seat he sur- 
veyed the crowd and twirled his watch-chain, after 
first putting his right ankle on his left knee, where 
it stayed during about twenty minutes of Mr. 

105 



106 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Bonar Law's speech. From time to time he took 
his gold pince-nez into the hand that was not busy 
with his watch-chain. After looking straight out 
into his audience for a while, his eyes sought the 
vaulted ceiling of the Guildhall. I could observe 
that he was not studying Gothic architecture, but 
was further preparing himself for the speech he was 
to make later. 

Some men have hands larger than their feet, and 
some have it the other way round. Mr. Lloyd 
George's feet are small, and he seemed to have taken 
considerable pains over his boots. His hands are 
large and strong. He wore a standing collar with 
wings upon which his double chin rested comfort- 
ably. He is much cleaner-cut than his pictures 
represent him. He would seem to have a greater 
degree of health and less spiritual quality than I 
had supposed. 

His eyes looked brown or black, but the man 
next to me said that they were in fact dark blue. 
One expects large eyes in such a man, but the prime 
minister's seemed smallish. He has a very merry 
twinkle in them, and that is one of his most marked 
characteristics. You feel that here is a reformer, 
but one who does not take himself too seriously. 
He is not so terribly in earnest as to fall over his 
own feet. I should say that he had taken to him- 
self the wisdom of Plato's counsel: "The best is 
frequently the enemy of the good." 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 107 

Mr. Lloyd George whispered something to his 
daughter and smiled, and it gave me a chance to 
note that his face is built along curved lines. If 
I may speak so of so great a statesman, his mouth 
has a cupid bow effect. He has a small nose and 
delicate nostrils. While his color only comes when 
he exerts himself in speaking, he is not pallid, and 
there is not the slightest suspicion of weariness 
about him. 

The lord mayor introduced the prime minister, 
and I noticed with interest that he dropped the 
"g" as in reading, which made me feel quite at 
home. When Lloyd George arose I got a new im- 
pression of him. He was quite free from self- 
consciousness when the great audience gave him its 
ovation. As he stood up with his hands on the rail, 
I noticed the depth of his chest, and how flat and 
straight his back was. He was dressed in a cut- 
away coat, quite in the prevailing style of exag- 
gerated tail. He wore a black four-in-hand, with 
a very small diamond pin in it. But for his hair 
of black and white in the proportion of fifty-five, 
and worn long and brushed back, Lloyd George 
would be quite the conventional type of profes- 
sional man. 

There is just a suggestion of Bob IngersoU and 
W. J. Bryan in his appearance. In a general way 
he belongs to the breed of statesmen who react 
sensitively to the aspirations, needs, and wrongs of 



108 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

the masses: but he is a very high type, and what- 
ever visionary quaHties he may have started with 
have been pretty well knocked out of him by his 
experience in the stand-up and knock-down fight- 
ing of parliamentary government. A man cannot 
get very gay with the hard facts if he is subject 
to the hazing that is the principal sport in the 
House of Commons. Lloyd George is very care- 
ful not to get on a high key, but he possesses a 
dramatic quality that he sometimes calls into use. 

Except at these rare moments the coming and 
going of reporters and stenographers, who made a 
confusion between the speaker and his audience, 
had no psychological effect upon the impression he 
was producing. He was not seeking for rapt at- 
tention. A phrase that occurred now and again 
throughout his remarks was, "You may depend 
upon it." If he had it in mind to convey a strong 
impression of dependability he succeeded admira- 
bly. 

When cameras were fired at him early in his 
speech and clouds of smoke floated over him, he 
was not in the least disconcerted; nor did it spoil 
the effect of his opening. When he touched a high 
point — for example, after his allusion to rebuilding 
on the rock of vindicated justice — he seemed to 
make a point of putting on his glasses and consult- 
ing his notes, as if to keep himself from any flow 
of eloquence. He got home splendidly with the 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 109 

impression of dependability when he said that he 
had just returned from a meeting where there had 
been no delusion about the magnitude of the Allies' 
task and no doubt about the result, that they had 
met like a lot of business men, looked facts in the 
face, and made arrangements to deal with them. 

In this passage, as in others, there was no flight 
of oratory to fall from, and only enough spirit to 
prevent any impression of deadness. Like so many 
English speakers, he makes you feel the power of 
his reserve. He looks very strong physically, but 
he has n't a big voice, and after a few minutes to- 
day it broke just a little into hoarseness. 

One is struck with a sense of the harmony of the 
whole Lloyd George, head, body, and intellectual 
personality. There is n't the slightest suspicion of 
age or waning powers. He is evidently a careful 
liver and keeps himself well in hand. 

He made his points very telling with what we in 
America would regard as a minimum of effort. 
His allusions to the Russians who have stood with 
bared breasts against the Germans, his assurance 
that no matter how great the debt the added wealth 
would be much greater, his picture of England 
struggling before the war under a running mort- 
gage of menace from Germany, and his statement 
that the nations would band together after the war 
to punish the first peace-breaker, were among the 
high points touched by him, with his feet firmly 



110 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

on the ground. While he used accent and intona- 
tion much more freely than did Bonar Law, he had 
a measured mamier of speech that was the opposite 
of spellbinding. 

Only at the very end did he put dramatic quality 
into it. He threw his notes down on the table with 
a gesture of having finished that chapter; then he 
put his hand on the red, cloth-covered rail, and 
spoke his last four or five sentences as Forbes- 
Robertson might have done with an appearance of 
restrained passion. 

After the voting of the usual resolution those on 
the platform and in the audience rose and sang 
"God save the King." Lloyd George stood up 
very straight, and sang with a will. The crowd 
then filed out. 

I fell in with Lord Claud Hamilton, and we 
walked over the wet glistening street to Cheap- 
side. Lord Claud has been a Conservative member 
of the House of Commons nearly the whole time 
for fifty-one years. He and his family and his class 
have stood for different things than those repre- 
sented by Lloyd George. I was very much in- 
terested in what Lord Claud thought about the 
meeting. 

"I have attended a great many meetings in the 
Guildhall," he said, "but this was the largest I have 
ever seen. Lloyd George and Bonar Law 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 111 

presented the matter most forcibly, and the loan 
will be a success." 

September, 1917. A few short weeks ago many 
had begun to wonder if the prime minister of 
England had not exhausted his inner resources, 
and his enemies were somewhat gleefully re- 
examining old leadership material. Meanwhile 
Mr. Lloyd George, it now appears, was getting 
measured for a new suit of political clothes several 
sizes larger. They have been finished; he has dis- 
carded the old suit and put on the new. The fit 
seems to be an excellent one. 

The men who grow are the men who become 
great in public life. Mr. Lloyd George may be 
said to have reached the pinnacle of his power and 
renown, but he is still a statesman in the making. 
No matter how big he may have been, the emer- 
gency is bigger, and to be equal to it, he must grow, 
grow, grow. His growth is a series of adventures. 
With each fresh one he acquires more sureness; 
with each increase in sureness he goes with a 
steadier step to a new success. And so the 
metaphor-maker, the half-baked thinker, the im- 
mature-minded visionary of a decade ago, grasps 
with an ever-strengthening hand the helm of world 
destiny. 

It seems only yesterday, as I look back, that I 



112 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

saw him coming and going at the golf-club, and 
the Conservative breed with whom I foregathered 
over the whiskey and soda on the veranda scorned 
to turn a head toward the man who even then had 
put an impudent spoon into the parliamentary 
dish. He was to them a mountebank and a 
hypocrite. I recall one mighty argument that 
turned on the sincerity of a man who, while wax- 
ing eloquent on the grievances and sufferings of the 
poor, was willing always to have the best of every- 
thing for himself. 

Even as late as last December, when he became 
premier, the average high-life opinion was skeptical 
of his ability to carry on. He was able to form 
a Government through the unexpected acceptance 
of the labor party of the promises he made them. 
Their exactions were great, but his promises 
jumped with them. He never was modest as a 
promiser. But, as in other things, Lloyd George 
had prescience as to what labor was prepared to 
do to help on the war and the new concessions 
that public opinion would admit in return there- 
for. His premiership had the distinct weakness 
of owing its existence and maintenance to an 
unsympathetic and unfriendly element in the 
House of Commons. 

At this stage of Mr. Lloyd George's progress 
from demagogy to statesmanship, thanks partly to 
his shrewd tact and partly to the good record that 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 113 

he had made in war conditions, first, as chancellor 
of the exchequer and, second, as minister of muni- 
tions, there rallied to his support a majority of the 
Tory party. People of that ilk may be lacking in 
imagination, their patriotism may be tinctured by 
self-interest or self-importance, but they are a good 
crowd to have behind you. They generate a com- 
fortable warmth ; their manners are good, and they 
stick. Their support put backbone into the Lloyd 
George movement. For his Government was then 
hardly to be regarded as a consummation; it was 
rather an experiment. 

Lloyd George made them a handsome return in 
kind for their confidence. Earl Curzon, leader of 
the Lords, Bonar Law, leader of the Commons, 
Mr. Balfour, Sir Edward Carson, and Lord 
Derby are five of the more prominent Conservatives 
who share the responsibilities of the Government. 
Thus it was that the Tories on one side and labor 
on the other joined hands and made a saddle upon 
which Lloyd George was carried to the heights of 
secure power. 

The Liberals were always looking about, but the 
more they looked the less they saw. There was no 
place for them to go. When Asquith fell, they 
were sure that the country was lost unless he came 
back soon to power. Out of power and not charged 
with the responsibility for action and results, he 
was a tremendous asset to the Liberal party. He 



114 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

has the gifts, without the defects, of pointed and 
eloquent speech. No man, not even the premier, 
can present the heart of the matter with greater 
clarity or happiness. But he was out, while his 
rival was in. And the premier was making hay 
while the sun shone. Every day, eveiy hour, he 
was going over the heads of parties and their leaders 
to the sovereign people of Britain. Little by little 
he established the direct relation fii-mly, until at 
last his unfailing sense of public thought and feel- 
ing told him that when the proper moment came 
he could strike from his hands the shackles of party 
control and make them his slaves who had been his 
masters, the leaders of the several parties in Parlia- 
ment. 

I hazard the guess, and not without some little 
foundation for it, that during this formatory period 
Mr. George has taken Abraham Lincoln as his 
model. There is a parallel in a large way between 
the two experiences and the two wars. I know 
that Mr. George has always ranked Lincoln almost 
first among English-speaking statesmen of all 
time. And I know that the life-long reading and 
study of Lincoln by the premier have within a few 
months been resumed with fresh assiduity. In the 
course of his eight-months' administration there has 
cropped out a constant analogy of policy. For 
example, Mr. George's ignoring of previous per- 
sonal associations, his obliteration of every line of 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 115 

social caste and political party, and his insistent 
search everywhere for ability and fitness recall the 
noble sacrifices of self made by the martyi'ed 
President in his yearning to gain the best sei'vice 
for his imperiled country. 

The English premier has not been called upon 
to endure alone and in silence the misunderstand- 
ings that were Lincoln's reward for his self-sacri- 
fice, but he has had a terrible load to carry, and he 
has carried it cheerfully and bravely. There has 
never been a trace of melancholy in the prime 
minister's life. He is not sensitive. He has had 
more of the rough and tumble of politics than Mr. 
Lincoln. He has less of the meditative side. He 
is a "scrapper" and a practical politician. He used 
to fight for everything he got. In the last year 
or two he has been learning to rely more for his 
results on the play of great forces. But it was 
good for him that he got his training by lifting 
dead weights. His early experiences and hard 
knocks gave him toughness and made him danger- 
ous in scrimmage, but they also prevented his ac- 
quiring for his armory that serene confidence with- 
out which absolute mastery in action can be only in 
the nature of a fluke. 

And that is the premier's new weapon. He has 
won confidence in himself in full measure and has 
been using it like a master these last few weeks. 
At fii'st his every act was introduced by a gesture 



116 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

of deference in this or that direction. It seemed 
to me that I could point to the precise week-end 
when fear ceased to exist as an element in the 
premier's policy. 

It was on the occasion a few weeks ago of the 
marshaling of all the hostile forces of the press and 
the House of Commons, and a formidable array it 
was. The premier must have had private intima- 
tion in advance of others that he had the enemy 
beaten. He made a speech at Queen's Hall on a 
Saturday, and went off to Paris on a Sunday, leav- 
ing many of his friends dubious about the result 
of a vote in the House of Commons on the Mon- 
day, which, if adverse, would have sent the Govern- 
ment to the country in a general election. It was 
an opportunity for all those who Avere disaffected 
on various gi-ounds, such as Winston Churchill's 
appointment, the Mesopotamia exposure, and Lord 
Hardinge's retention, the choice of Mr. Montagu 
for a cabinet position, — recalling unpleasant mat- 
ters of the past, — the air raids, the Irish question, 
Lord Northcliffe, to move on Lloyd George be- 
hind a masked battery. This latter was the labor 
fight to increase the minimum pay for laborers in 
the Agricultural bill from twenty-five to thirty 
shillings a week. 

What happened is history. The great vote of 
confidence that this fight resulted in undoubtedly 
emboldened the premier to strike for complete 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 117 

emancipation from labor dictation when Mr. 
Henderson made the opportunity a few weeks later. 
Mr. George showed in that affair the quickness of 
action and thorough preparedness that go with 
deliberate planning. He won, and he is for the 
moment free. He is in the saddle, and on a horse 
bridle-wise to him and not tricky to secret signs 
from the labor hostler. 

The premier has apparently lost little in the 
ranks of labor, while his gain b}'- his audacity had 
been immense in other directions. Only that por- 
tion of labor capable of sacrificing the narrow 
interest for the broader one of country has been 
sincerely friendly, and that portion he still holds. 
Almost every other element, except the spoils-hunt- 
ing among the Liberals, is marshaled in support of 
the Government. England to-day shows a more 
solid front than at any previous time. Lloyd 
George's well aimed blows have backed his enemies 
off the boards, and those who are against him now 
are down-and-outers and tainted with treasonable 
pacifism. 

Yet with all the fine developing to which refer- 
ence has been made there is still a certain narrow- 
ness about Lloyd George. In a limited number 
of things he thinks in terms of politics. He has 
defied ])arliamentary enemies, outschemed and out- 
fought them. But, as I read him, he is still an 
opportunist. He would n't go against the popular 



118 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

mood, however uninformed and misled. He keeps 
his ear rather close to the ground. 

I was discussing Mr. George, his services to 
his country and humanity, at an officers' mess at 
the American headquarters recently. The talk 
was in regard to a policy of absolute and public 
frankness about sinkings by the U-boat. An army 
doctor, evidently sharp on psycholog}% spoke in 
effect as follows: 

"The present policy of soft-pedaling on sub- 
marine news is precisely the reverse of what is good 
for us and bad for Germany. We ought to put 
it out at its blackest. Fill Germany full of 
optimistic 'dope.' Let her get good and drunk on 
it. Then will come the inevitable disappointment. 
After that there will be a recovery. Give tlie same 
treatment again. Get them up as high as possible. 
Then will come a fall. Keep it going on these 
lines, and Germany will crack. There is no forti- 
tude that can withstand that process. On the other 
side, looking at the facts squarely will give us an 
intelligent and reasoned courage and stimulate our 
effort. Mark my words, the war will be won by 
those with strength enough to face the truth at 
every stage and lost by those who bemuse them- 
selves with ill-timed optimism." 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 119 

BALFOUR 

Every one said that after the reception to Joffre 
and his French colleagues there would be an anti- 
climax when the English came. It was certain that 
there could be no higher pitch of enthusiasm; any 
change must be downward. Perhaps Mr. Balfour 
himself expected an anticlimax. Possibly the 
greeting that New York gave him penetrated his 
traditional reserve ; for he was visibly affected when 
he stood before the audience at the City Hall yes- 
terday afternoon. 

No public man in England, unless it be Mr. 
Bonar Law, is more coldly self -restrained than Mr. 
Balfour, but those who were there yesterday had 
the rare opportunity of seeing an Englishman, per- 
haps the greatest and certainly the most typical and 
representative Englishman, under the influence of 
his emotions. 

Mr. Balfour is an old campaigner. He was born 
in 1848 and was a member of the House of Com- 
mons at twenty-six. At thirty-one he wrote a book, 
"A Defense of Philosophic Doubt," and from that 
time on has never been too busy in practical politics 
to disport himself in academic backwaters. He was 
prime minister at fifty-four, and for a number of 
years he was a vibrating hyphen between two ele- 
ments in his own party, representing the extremes 
of tariff policy. He was the captain of the St. 



120 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Andrew's Royal and Ancient Golf Club; he is a 
cultivated musician ; in his seventh decade he played 
in doubles of the open tennis tournament with the 
world's champion, Tony Wilding, since killed in 
action, as his partner. To top it all, Lord North- 
cliffe has made two campaigns against him, one 
when he was at the admiralty, and the other since 
he was transferred to the Foreign Office. 

It is n't on record that Mr. Balfour ever turned 
a hair. But yesterday in the City Hall he was 
clearly embarrassed, and in a way that went to the 
heart of his auditors. No eloquence could have 
been as moving as the slight breakdown in self-con- 
trol of this great kinsman from across the sea. 

When Mr. Balfour came in with the mayor and 
his party he had a cordial reception, but less fervid 
and tumultuous than that accorded Joffre and 
Viviani. As he mounted the rostrum he applied 
to his mouth and face a handkerchief that he held 
in his right hand. He smiled pleasantly and 
showed a set of even white teeth. He has a fine 
head, fresh pink skin, a manly handsomeness of fea- 
tures that commands instant good-will and confi- 
dence. 

By their contrast his eyes remind me of General 
Joffre's. His had mystery in them; they inspired 
me with awe ; they gave him a soldier's severe mien. 
He bent their glance on you searchingly, almost 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 121 

with menace. Mr. Balfour's eyes are blue and 
frankly amiable. 

As a fact, many people have tackled Mr. Balfour 
in the last forty-five years, thinking, because of his 
gentleness of nature or his urbanity of manner, that 
fighting quality was lacking in him. They have 
"caught a Tartar." This impression of harmless- 
ness was borne out in his early years by frail health 
and a certain dilettantism. But when Balfour has 
been stirred up he has always surprised his enemies 
by his pugnacity and staying power. His temper- 
ament is not unlike President Wilson's. Both are 
intellectuals, and Diderox's paradox, which has been 
applied to the President, fits Mr. Balfour. In some 
of the great crises in which he has figured he has 
been "a centre of human agitation in which he him- 
self took no emotional part, though he was its intel- 
lectual prime mover." 

When the question of a new Ambassador to the 
United States was under discussion a few months 
ago, I heard Mr. Balfour's name mentioned in that 
connection in Downing Street circles, and the intel- 
lectual congeniality of the foreign secretary and the 
President was remarked by men who knew both per- 
sonally. 

While Lieutenant-General Bridges, the very pic- 
ture of a soldier, stood motionless on the left, Mr. 
Balfour showed restlessness. He put his pince-nez 



122 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

glasses on and then took them off; he folded his left 
arm across his chest, rested his right elbow on it, 
and put his chin in his right hand ; he felt his cravat, 
put both hands behind his back, then again clasped 
them. This went on all through the preliminary 
speaking. During most of this time Mr. Balfour's 
lips were parted in a pleasant smile, for the mayor 
was saying mighty nice things about him. 

When the crowd had a chance to revise its im- 
pression, it noted that all Englishmen of the party 
were very like men of the same sort in this coun- 
try, and the similarity conveyed vastly more sense 
of compliment than it would have done a few short 
months ago. The crowd saw, too, with a certain 
pride of race, that the foreign secretary was the 
pattern of an English gentleman. 

He is six feet and over, with a fine, well set-up 
frame. He wore a Prince Albert coat with a low 
turn-down collar. His shoes were calfskin and 
British in a certain affectation of heaviness. 

I could n't help feeling that Mr. Balfour was a 
good deal di'essed up. I have often seen him in 
the dining-room of a club in London where I am 
in the habit of lunching in the summer, and he 
would wear tweeds and rubber-soled shoes. He 
would come in very quietly, usually with a book in 
his hand, and nobody would notice him much, for 
they don't lionize their lions much in England — 
a good habit we ought to learn from our cousins, 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 123 

now that we are brothers-in-arms. I had the im- 
pression from seeing Mr. Balfom' thus that he had 
a contempt for dress. But of course convention- 
ahty called for a certain costume for the head of 
the commission; Mr. Balfour wore it, and it was 
becoming to him. 

I could n't repress a feeling of pride in this great 
gentleman as he stood there, and I believe that 
the same feeling was general in the audience. The 
best thing, perhaps, about family and position is 
that it confers the right not to think too much about 
it. Mr. Balfour is one of the best-born men in 
England, but there is n't a trace of the kind of con- 
sciousness that sometimes goes with position. He 
has had in his hands the power to create peers; he 
could himself have had any kind of peerage. His 
transfer to the House of Lords would have con- 
ferred distinction upon that body. He has pre- 
ferred to remain Mr. Balfour. 

His mother belonged to the great house of Cecil, 
and the representative of the house in the last gen- 
eration, the third Marquis of Salisbury, gave his 
nephew his schooling in politics. While the Cecils 
are aristocrats of aristocrats, they owe their en- 
nobling to a sturdy and strenuous business man 
who a few centuries ago rendered his country a 
signal service and one that was, in a way, prophetic 
of the present mighty struggle. The original Cecil, 
from whom the race may well get its moral and 



124 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

intellectual vigor, was a certain Burghley who 
helped to organise the Merchant Adventurers' 
Association of London. Through the hold work of 
this organization London and England threw off 
the commercial slavery of the Hanseatic League, 
which had controlled the countrj'^ by corrupting the 
court. 

The first sound from Mr. Balfour's hps was when 
he gave the British "Hear, hear" to express his ap- 
proval of the mayor's allusion to the common cause 
of England and America. There was what is to 
us a new and very pleasant mannerism in his turn- 
ing to the admiral and smiling quite frankly at the 
reference to the service rendered by the British 
Navy. An American would have indicated his no- 
tice and approval much more furtively. When the 
mayor alluded to victory in the trenches, Mr. Bal- 
four's hand went to his heart. It was done ab- 
sently, and may have been accidental. 

The mayor's introduction of Mr. Choate was fol- 
lowed by a beautiful incident. Mr. Choate stood 
on a lower level about fifteen feet away. At the 
mayor's mention of "New York's foremost citizen," 
Mr. Balfour turned to Mr. Choate with an affec- 
tionate and smiling regard. He hesitated, took a 
short step or two, and then went forward with out- 
stretched hand to the American whom he had known 
so well and had learned to respect and love when he 
was Ambassador at the Court of St. James's. The 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 125 

incident was free from the least tinge of the theat- 
rical. It was characterized by such sincerity and 
good taste that it aroused the kind of feeling that 
is not spent by making a show. 

Mr. Choate's allusion to Mr. Balfour's lifelong 
friendship for America recalled to many the 
Venezuelan trouble, which once brought America 
and England apparently so near war. It was 
during the Marquis of Salisbuiy's premiership, and 
it was Mr. Balfour who, as leader in the House of 
Commons, announced that his Government would 
give way virtually on the broad gi^ound that there 
must never be a war between the two branches of 
the English-speaking race. 

The English are very sensitive to heat, and Lord 
Cunliffe must have suffered intensely with his over- 
coat on. General Bridges was a military statue 
through it all, but the foreign secretary was per- 
spiring freely. The room was stifling by the time 
Mr. Balfour's turn came. The introduction was 
the signal for a silk-hat salute and a general out- 
burst that made me doubt whether even the hero of 
the Marne had called forth greater enthusiasm. 

It was wonderful to see an American audience 
with a considerable portion of Irish and German 
Americans giving such a royal welcome to an 
Englishman. A neighbor at my elbow recalled 
with appropriate paraphrase Tennyson's lines on 
the welcome to Queen Alexandra, 



126 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we. 
But all of us Danes in our welcome to thee." 

Mr. Balfour took the welcome with that charm 
of simplicity and naturalness that is characteristic, 
but it could be seen that he was touched to his very 
center. There was not the customary sparing of 
gesture. On the contrary, the hands were in con- 
stant action, and his words did n't flow. But it 
was exactly the speech to sink deepest. He 
couldn't have produced a better or deeper im- 
pression by delivering an eloquent oration. As 
he proceeded, the applause increased, and there was 
a big outburst when he spoke of America's coming 
to England's assistance and "sharing our tri- 
umphs." He spoke with scarcely a trace of what 
we are pleased to call the English accent. 

When he described the reception at the landing 
and in the street he was so affected that he had 
to pause for the simplest words. In telling of the 
shouts of welcome he said that they came "from 
every — every — every window, every house — " and 
later he began a new passage with "Ladies — " 

Those of us who went out together were agreed 
in the view, that the occasion could hardly have 
been more successful in its creation of genuine good- 
will, and that Mr. Balfour had produced by his sim- 
plicity and even by his halting and embarrassment, 
if such it was, an effect of sincerity that no rhetorical 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 127 

art could have given. I think we were agreed in 
allotting Arthur James Balfour first place in Eng- 
lish public life, though we all admitted Lloyd 
George's superior fitness for war leadership. Cer- 
tainly in our little discussion Mr. Balfour was ac- 
corded first rank in all England as a simple, great- 
hearted gentleman. 

"For he has worn without abuse 
The grand old name of gentleman." 

LORD NORTHCLIFFE 

December 11, 1917. Lord Northcliffe has been 
a conspicuous figure at the Paris conference. He 
has been more than that, for next to the premiers 
and Colonel House he has been the most active 
man. 

"We could not have accomplished what we did 
without him," the colonel remarked. Northcliffe 
has more steam than any other man in England, 
and I cannot recall his equal in that respect in 
America. His enemies say that he acts first and 
thinks afterwards, if at all. The truth is that 
Northcliffe has a wonderfully quick mind in which 
he maintains a most precise order. Iri his mental 
housekeeping he is assisted by one of the best mem- 
ories I have ever known. He does n't know what 
fear is ; his enemies call this lack of sensibility." 

A surface judgment would be that he is literally 
made of indiscretion, but those who watch him 



128 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

closely will not fail to notice that he always sets 
a mark for himself and is moving toward it even 
when he appears to be rmming wild. 

He unquestionably has more to do with directing 
British opinion than any other man, and j^et, in all 
except his bulldog tenacity, he is more of a new- 
country man than a Britisher. 

The love of form and established habit that is 
characteristically British Lord Northcliffe has no 
time whatever. Prudence and tact are also left 
out of his vocabulary. 

I could not help wondering at him the other day 
when he dictated for publication in "The New York 
Times," the statement that, of the British cabinet, 
Lloyd George, Milner, and Smuts were capable, 
with the implication, at least, that the rest were 
"shirt-fronts" and "rubber-stamps." Other men 
may achieve greatness by the toilsome methods of 
conciliation, but whatever Northcliffe wins will be 
by using both fists and a pair of stout English boots. 

Wherever Lord Northcliffe is, it pleases him 
most to be head of the newspaper tribe. If the 
nobility are on one side of the road and the journal- 
istic profession on the other, give Lord Northcliffe 
a chance to choose between them and he will always 
herd with those who have been his life-long asso- 
ciates, with whom he retains sympathy and affinity, 
and whose ability he rates higher than ability in 
any other line of human endeavor. 




THE FO C SLE OF A BRITISH BATTLESHIP 




A BRITISH BATTLESHIP TAKING IN OIL FUEL AT SEA 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 129 

He is quick-tempered, but good-hearted to the 
core, and no fellow-journahst ever applies to him in 
vain for legitimate assistance in his work. He is 
never ashamed, but always proud of liis profession 
and willing in any company to stand up and be 
counted a reporter. 

On the morning that the Supreme War Council 
was to meet at Versailles, a little woman reporter 
met him at the door of the Hotel de Crillon. She 
wanted an interview with Lloyd George, which was 
ridiculously impossible at such a time. Northcliffe 
had known her and regarded her highly, and he was 
at once keen to help her get what she wanted. 

The prime minister, late as usual, for it wanted 
but a few minutes of the hour appointed to leave 
the hotel, was holding a conference with Balfour, 
Milner, and Reading. Lord Northcliffe went in 
and when he came out he said, "I interrupted them 
in an important meeting, but I apologised." On 
the way from the room to the carriage the woman 
reporter, through Northcliffe's good offices, had a 
chat with the prime minister and got a story that 
went all over the world from the "Petit Parisien." 

Lord Northcliffe was here, there, and everywhere, 
for and with the American Mission. Since its de- 
parture I happen to know that he has been working 
day and night "buttoning up" work necessarily left 
uncompleted by them. 

If there were such an office as general manager 



130 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

of the details of war, it would be difficult at this time 
to find any man better suited for that job. Another 
man who gives the same impression of hustling effi- 
ciency is Sir Eric Geddes, who, it seems to me, 
should have been included with the "capables" in 
the Lloyd George cabinet. 

London, December 7, 1917. I have had an in- 
terview at "The London Times" office, in Printing 
House Square, with Lord Northcliffe, who is the 
storm center of the present political crisis. The 
fall of the Asquith Government follows on the con- 
tinued hammering of the Northcliffe press, and 
Lord Northcliffe is blamed or praised according to 
the point of view. 

*'The whole country has risen to the leadership of 
Lloyd George," said Lord Northcliffe. "The 
English spirit responds to his will and determina- 
tion. 

"He has summoned to his council the best bus- 
iness brains of the country, an element that has been 
entirely neglected by the politicians of the late 
Government. 

"The English are not an emotional people, but 
the crowds, which gathered in such numbers and 
with such enthusiasm at the war office to-day, 
showed that the English people wanted a man and 
they have got a man. 

"I think that Americans will welcome the Lloyd 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 131 

George ministiy. There are likely to be two men 
in the new cabinet peculiarly acceptable to the 
United States, one of them in the foreign office, 
which has to deal with all the questions arising be- 
tween the two nations." 

Lord Northcliffe was confident of the present 
crisis working out in such a way as thoroughly to 
energize the conduct of the war. When asked 
whether he would enter the Government or take any 
active personal part in poliitics, Lord Northcliffe 
said: 

"To a newspaper like 'The New York Times,' 
which puts into practice on a very large scale and 
with marked success the doctrine of promoting its 
own welfare by working along thoroughly imper- 
sonal and independent lines for the welfare of 
country and humanity, the course of the newspapers 
under my management needs no explanation. 
Throughout all these critical times the so called 
Northcliffe press has sought nothing for its con- 
trolling head, and for a reason that may be referred 
to selfish motives, if only those who examine the 
motives do so with an informed mind. 

"Newspapers can succeed only when they are 
newspapers and nothing else, that is to say, when 
they print the news fully and fairly on the one hand 
and on the other comment on it, having only the 
public interest at heart. No purse would be equal 
to the strain of running a newspaper as a personal 



132 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

or political organ to promote the fortunes of its 
owner. Nor could such a paper ever appeal to a 
public broad enough to form a base on which to 
build a real newspaper success. 

"For proof of the fatuity of journalistic endeavor 
in the form of the party organ a glimpse at the 
London field is quite sufficient. In nearly every 
case the abuse of the Northcliffe press comes from 
some pitiful failure of a newspaper that is a per- 
sonal or political affair and extra- journalistic in its 
aims. Such jom'nalism is a fragile mushroom and 
is bound to perish. To the discriminating eye the 
criticism indulged in by such newspapers is an un- 
warranted tribute to power that does not exist or 
at least not in the form that they apprehend. The 
Northcliffe press gets no power from and gives none 
to its director except in so far as he directs it for 
the good of the nation and in accordance with the 
demands of public opinion. 

"It is true that an intelligently conducted news- 
paper can inform and guide public opinion, but this 
is done more through publishing the news than by 
the dictum of the editorial. *Ye shall know the 
truth, and the truth shall make you free* must be 
the underlying principles of journalism in a democ- 
racy. 

"To go back to the truth-telling which set the 
face of England toward real preparedness in this 
war : We were up against the condition of the Ger- 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 133 

man machine-gun being equal in fighting power to 
one thousand English soldiers, and we were shoot- 
ing shrapnel at the trenches when in the spring of 
1915 the 'Times' succeeded in penetrating through 
the censorshij) with a statement of the facts as they 
existed in France. Coincidentally with the pub- 
lication of the news 'The Daily Mail' brought home 
the responsibihty to the war office in a series of 
editorials that may be described as brutally frank. 

"Now nine out of ten of the unthinking blamed 
the director of the Northcliffe press at that time. 
A wave of indignation swept over the country. 
Charges were sprung by the privately owned and 
politically controlled organs. It was charged, per- 
haps with a color of truth, that the Northcliffe press 
had been largely responsible for the appointment 
of Lord Kitchener originally. It never occurred 
to these un journalistic minds that the responsibility 
imposed continuing responsibility or the proper con- 
duct of the war office. 

"The advocacy of Lord Kitchener's appointment 
had been for public, not private reasons. It was 
not because he was a personal friend but because he 
seemed to be the man best fitted for the work. He 
proved his fitness except in certain particulars, and 
his deficiencies in those, when they became apparent, 
laid upon the newspaper, which had been instru- 
mental in turning him back from Egypt to the war 
office, a peculiar obligation of frank criticism. 



134 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

"Its duty was to the nation when Lord Kitchener 
was appointed. Its duty remained to the nation 
when the time came to choose between duty to the 
nation and bhnd support of the war office. 

"No pride of authorship, no fear of consequences, 
restrained the Northchffe press when the hour ar- 
rived to save England through bringing out ugly 
and terrible facts. There was n't a single sub- 
scriber or line of advertising or any other immediate 
journalistic advantage to be gained by it. There 
were friends to be lost. There was misunderstand- 
ing hard to bear and not to be cleared away in a 
life-time. But things had to be done or all the 
foundation stones upon which had been built the 
work of a hf etime had to be uprooted and cast aside. 
And far beyond all that the country would continue 
to suffer from unrectified error. 

"The criticism of the Asquith Government has 
been precisely the same. The charges against the 
Northcliffe interests of personal ambition and con- 
spiracy and all the rest have come from imagina- 
tions fed by superabundant ignorance on the sub- 
ject of independent journalism. 

"Neither friendship nor enmity has had the least 
part in shaping the policy of our newspapers. Mr. 
Asquith and Mr. George would be supported and 
opposed if their places were exchanged. We have 
tried to sweep the horizon telescopically to find the 
strong spots for the Allied defense. We have stud- 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 135 

ied the situation agonizingly for men to lead, above 
all, for the man who could rise to an emergency. 

"The man whose development in the war con- 
ditions was the best and biggest did not happen to 
be in our own poHtical camp. He was on the op- 
posite side. His whole ante-bellum career was an- 
tagonistic to the political principles to which we ad- 
hered. That mattered not one jot. There were 
neither political nor personal considerations where 
the country was at stake. 

"It is not only because of Lloyd George's record 
that he has the support of the Northcliff e press, but 
his selection has been come at by a process of elim- 
ination. He is not a man of detail, but perhaps it 
is better that his outlook on this great war should 
be imfettered by so much detail. He has great 
vision. He will penetrate to the realities. Things 
the seeing and doing of which in season would have 
won this war can almost be counted on the fingers 
of one hand. Not seeing a thousand unessentials 
is a help in seeing the ten essentials. 

*'Lloyd George has an enthusiasm that is in itself 
genius. He infects others with it, and thus they 
are made to put forth their best effort. His un- 
selfishness, his sincerity, his sympathy for the com- 
mon man, his pure patriotism, his insight, his bound- 
less energy, and his power to preach to the nation 
the uncompromising faith in victory which animates 
his whole being will bring success to his leadership. 



136 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

"We shall see the war stride at last. The ma- 
chine will be geared to run at high speed. The un- 
alterable resolve of this people to put forth every 
ounce, the veiy last agony of effort, will find ex- 
pression in a human being responsive to that su- 
preme will. 

"And permit me to add, the leadership of the 
gi-eatest democrat in the world, the most true and 
tried upholder of free institutions, and the most 
sincere champion of common people should renew 
and make vital and living the bonds which bind us 
to the hundred millions across water who enjoy the 
same liberty and who are of our tongue and blood." 

As I was leaving Lord Northcliffe, he called me 
back and asked me to include the following in what I 
cabled to the "Times": 

"A letter has been quoted here as having been 
received in America from a man named Trevelyan, 
who writes 'M. P.' after his name, and purports to 
put forward peace aspirations on behalf of a body 
of sentiment in this country. He may be a member 
of Parliament, (there are 670 of them,) but if he is, 
I never heard of him." 

SIR HORACE PLUNKETT 

If I were asked to mention the Britisher who, I 
think, is most familiar and sympathetic with Amer- 
ica and her institutions and traditions, Sir Horace 
Plunkett would come first into my mind. 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 137 

I have happened to see something of him on both 
sides of the ocean, and he seems to me to be equally 
at home in Washington and London. He is a 
friend of President Wilson and an intimate 
of both Colonel House and Colonel Roosevelt. 
The latter found in him a most helpful adviser 
on agricultural and conservation subjects, which 
he made important concerns of his administra- 
tion. When recovering from the injuries re- 
ceived in the Irish rebellion a year ago, Sir Horace 
went to a sanitarium in Michigan for the period 
of his convalescence, and he has but recently re- 
turned. 

Sir Horace belongs to the family of which Lord 
Dunsany is the head. I believe that his father, the 
late baron, had some cattle interests in America. 
At all events, the present Sir Horace, a younger 
son, went to Wyoming in 1879 and remained in 
America ten years. Wherever he goes he makes 
friends through his gentle optimism and sturdy 
character, "the synthesis of the ideal and the prac- 
tical," and when he came home to Ireland he left 
behind him associations that he has continued to 
cherish. 

His unanimous selection as chairman of the Irish 
Convention was a unique tribute. Amid all the 
conflict of opinion the presidency went to Plunkett 
by common consent. He is certainly entitled to re- 
gard his choice as the crowning honor of a life 



138 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

devoted to Ireland. For British patriot that he is, 
he is an Irishman to his heart's core. 

His hfe has been a labor of love for Ireland. It 
was one of those rare instances in which high motive 
and practical success were combined. He came 
back from America in 1889, thirty-five years of 
age, with an irrepressible enthusiasm that has 
been molded into a grand purpose, to redeem Ire- 
land from poverty to prosperity. With the pure 
zeal of a crusader he went about preaching coop- 
eration, cooperation, cooperation, cooperation for 
the purchase of seed, so as to buy the best at the 
cheapest price, for the purchase of fertilizer, and 
for the marketing of the crop. All of this Pat 
had previously done in the happy-go-lucky way of 
his race. 

The work went slowly at fii'st ; only a pure zealot 
would have held on. Having finally made a start 
in building a cooperative machine, Plunkett went 
after legislation, and at last secured the passage of 
laws that gave tenants right of purchase on favor- 
able terms. 

To-day the Ireland that groaned under its hard- 
ships thirty years ago is one of the most prosperous 
sections of Great Britain. It is said that while in 
politics representatives of the different Irish sec- 
tions will beat each other's brains out with shillalahs 
on sight, the same representatives will sit down to- 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 139 

gether in amity in one of Sir Horace Plunkett's 
agricultural meetings. 

These facts will give some idea of the fitness of 
Sir Horace for the post to which he has been called 
and the momentum that his selection imparts to the 
cause of a pacified and united Ireland. In the first 
flush of enthusiasm that this act of the convention 
has generated there are new and strong hopes of 
settling the problems hitherto regarded as insoluble. 
It is difl[icult to imagine any source more prolific 
of encouragement for the Allied cause than such 
a settlement. Every influence in America that can 
be brought to bear ought to be counted on, for the 
United States is now irrevocably committed to this 
war, and it is a case of "one for all, and all for 
one. 

Incidentally it may be mentioned that one of Sir 
Horace Plunkett's cherished ambitions has been to 
serve America in respect to her agi'icultural inter- 
ests. The subject is one about which he has writ- 
ten, and I know that he stood ready to give some 
such personal leadership as he gave to Ireland, if 
desired. In the last year, he has not been robust, 
and in such a cause as Irish reconciliation he will 
put out the last ounce of his strength. May success 
bring him rejuvenation instead of exhaustion. 



140 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

MAJOR ASTOR 

In the appointment of his parliamentary secre- 
taries Lloyd George once again illustrates the 
happy faculty possessed by the prime minister of 
drawing upon the entire civilization for public serv- 
ice. His hunt for available material is not limited 
by faction, party, or social caste. Of lively interest 
to America is the drafting of Major Waldorf Astor 
as one of the secretaries. 

Major Astor is the Conservative M. P. for 
Plymouth, and the eldest son and heir of Lord 
(William Waldorf) Astor. He is a Conservative 
in politics, and by wealth and position is associated 
with the upper class, and the prime minister in his 
wide searcli for Government servants who can serve, 
singled him out. To-day Major Astor v/as already 
at work superintending the erection of huts which 
are to house the prime minister's staff, in the gar- 
den, or wliat we call the backyard, of No. 10 
Downing Street. For Major Astor himself, Mrs. 
Lloyd George has given up two rooms that belonged 
to the residential part of the premier's headquar- 
ters, so great is the press for accommodation for 
the enlarged official staff made necessary by the 
strenuous war program. 

When I saw Major Astor to-day I could appre- 
ciate the reasons for I^loj^d George's choice. He 
has the ease and kindness which make friends in- 



BRITISH MEN OF THE WAR 141 

stantly. If I had not loiown who he was I should 
have been doubtful from his manner and speech as 
to whether he was American or English. 

As is well known, Major and Mrs. Astor, for- 
merly Miss Langhorne of Virginia, are warmly 
American in sympathy and take a lively interest in 
all that goes on across the Atlantic. At Cliveden, 
their place on the Thames, they have made room 
for the famous Canadian Hospital, with its one 
thousand beds, where everything from toothbrush 
to cot is made in Canada. Mrs. Astor devotes her- 
self to this hospital, and it is not too much to say 
that no woman has given herself more completely 
to the work of caring for the wounded and helping 
the permanently incapacitated. 

Major Astor has treated the war as an oppor- 
tunity for intensive effort. His political affiliations 
as a Tory have interfered in no wise with his willing- 
ness to accept service, however offered, and it hap- 
pened that circumstances some time ago brought 
him within the orbit of the present prime minister. 
It speaks well for the breadth of both that they 
found the association congenial from the first, and 
now the prime minister has called the young poli- 
tician to his side in delicate and important work. 

At the risk of violating the modesty of Major 
Astor I am going to gratify the interest of America 
by dwelling somewhat upon his personality. There 
are few young men in either the political or social 



142 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

life of the country more popular or more trusted. 
If fate had cast his lot in the United States, it 
would have been the same. His talents and en- 
gaging qualities lie deeper than conventionality. 
If he were in New York he would make a live 
man to run for mayor and a good official after he 
was elected, and perhaps he would be more pop- 
ular on the east side than on Fifth Avenue. 

Major Astor among other activities has belonged 
to a coterie that backed and edited the "Round 
Table," a publication a good deal like our own 
"New Republic." The chief editor of the "Round 
Table," Philip Kerr, is to be another secretary to 
Mr. Lloyd George. The "Round Table" circle 
is composed of live-wire Conservatives, men of high 
social position who set no store by that, but who 
put themselves above caste by rendering real serv- 
ice of any kind. 



CHAPTER IX 

TO EUROPE WITH PERSHING 

May 28 — June 7, 1917. We got under way 
about five o'clock on May 28. As far as we could 
ascertain there was no convoy and we had the fog- 
horn going nearly all night. 

My seat was at the captain's table with some 
English officers, one of whom. Colonel Puckle, had 
been with the Balfour party. General Pershing 
and his personal staff, constituting a party of eight 
or ten, had a table to themselves. The civilians, or 
reserves, all wore uniform, while the regular officers 
were in mufti. Soldiers — except the staff — had 
their meals an hour earlier than passengers. 

In the afternoon all the military on board were 
ordered to appear before the medical staff for vac- 
cination against smallpox, typhoid, and para- 
typhoid, and about two hundi'cd injections were 
given. The technic was extremely good, a fresh 
sterile needle being used each time and the skin 
cleaned up with an iodine pad applied for smallpox 
vaccination. Most of the men were good-humored, 
and joked while the operation was going on. 

The wonderful health record made in the army 

143 



144 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

and the absolute suppression of typhoid has made 
every one a wiUing victim to the medical men. 

The captain stays on the bridge pretty steadily. 
He is the captain who went down with the Arabic. 
That ship sunk eleven minutes after being hit. We 
have life-boats, rafts, and belts in profusion, fully 
four to one of the requirements, to say nothing of 
our non-sinkable captain. All the officers are busy 
studying French, and are much interested. 
Classes have been organized by Major Robert 
Bacon, Captain Gustave Forges, Major Bayne, 
and the staff of interpreters. The American offi- 
cers are profiting greatly by lectures given by ex- 
perienced English officers aboard, and military con- 
ferences are going on among the officers. The ship 
is somewhat shy on social life, as there are only 
about twelve women and one child in the first 
saloon. We are proceeding at less than full speed. 

We had a very simple drill for the purpose of 
showing the passengers the way to their boats. Al- 
though not told to do so, most of the passengers 
wore life-belts to the drill. I found myself in boat 
No. 7 with three ladies and nine men. 

The method of assignment was to put the military 
together and then divide the rest alphabetically ac- 
cording to the passenger list. It was remarked that 
only high officers were together in one boat, which 
savored too much of putting all your eggs into one 
basket. Fifteen passengers were allotted to each 



TO EUROPE WITH PERSHING 145 

boat, the full capacity of which was sixty. All the 
boats were swung out on the davits outside the rail 
on deck. 

Purser Thaw made a short address at luncheon, 
advising warm clothes in case of an emergency, and 
also advising sleeping in one's clothes. 

The usual concert for seamen's orphans netted 
over three hundred dollars, a record for the number 
of passengers. There were readings by Lyn 
Harding; Frederick Palmer spoke, and Miss Juta 
sang. 

I was asked to make an appeal for the children's 
claims, which I did in part as follows : 

"We make our appeal to-night for the sailorman 
of the merchant ship — the man who has won for the 
world, but lost for himself. He has always been 
even in peace times a modest and nameless hero. 
Since the war it has seemed to me that of all those 
who served his country, his service has been most 
truly and most deeply noble. For he has had no 
country in the sense of its having furnished him 
with luxury or comfort. Often he has been obliged 
to leave wife and children ill-clad and poorly fed. 
He has gone out to sea and storm, usually without 
protection of guns or gunners, to meet eye to eye 
the stealthy and deadly submarine, has met it, been 
cruelly used by it, and then, perhaps, has gone 
again and still again. We might have lost without 
the merchant ship and its gallant crew, these men 



146 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

who have served without reward; who were free to 
refuse, but who volunteered their services; who 
braved unseen dangers ; filled unnamed gi'aves, and 
left their children to an uncertain and absent- 
minded charity. We who are more fortunate, we 
who go down to the sea in ships and know its dan- 
gers and its terrors, yes, who even now stand in 
the shadow of them, we should feel it a privilege to 
give — give to the children of those who have died in 
a service to which we owe our freedom and life 
itself." 

But the big feature was the first public appear- 
ance of General Pershing, who made a fine, soldier- 
like impression. Colonel Alvord presided, and the 
occasion was altogether successful. 

On Sunday Lyn Harding and Dr. Beaumont 
conducted the Episcopal service, and passengers 
who failed to attend requested another service, 
which was held in the evening. In the afternoon 
Major Hugh Young dehvered an interesting ad- 
dress to a large audience. 

At dawn on June 6 destroyers wheeled into line 
with us about half a mile off our forward quar- 
ters, the Stars and Stripes flying bhthely from their 
mizzens. As the day wore on and the ship's com- 
pany assembled on deck, there was no demonstra- 
tion or ceremony, but there was general satisfac- 
tion. The destroyers frisked about like squirrels, 
speeding up, slowing down, crossing our bows, 



TO EUROPE WITH PERSHING 147 

circling round the ship, and otherwise disporting 
themselves after the fashion of a four-funneled 
high-speed war craft ready to dash at any sea 
monster that might appear. Plow inspiring it is to 
see the bright blue banner of freedom fluttering at 
their mastheads! Every passenger has a sense of 
elation ; his stride on deck becomes more elastic, and 
light-hearted laughter rings out from the saloons. 
Men and women stand at the rail for hours on end 
watching the destroyers' manoeuvers. 

We did not know it, but we had all been suffer- 
ing from a subconscious nervous strain. Now it is 
lifted. Uncle Sam has come to Europe with his 
own fighting machines. 

There is something of a national drama in this 
voyage for freedom. It is the return of the May- 
flower, armed. 

ARRIVAL IN PARIS 

The special train bearing General Pershing and 
his party to Paris arrived at the Gare du Nord. 
I happened to be where I had a close view of the 
details of his reception. General Pershing ap- 
peared in the doorway of the car: immediately in 
front of him was the guard of honor in gray uni- 
forms, and at the left the band of the Garde Re- 
publicaine. The general filled the small door of the 
car as he stood erect, motionless, and expression- 
less, his eyes fixed above the heads of the reception 



148 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

partj^, which occupied the clear space of the plat- 
form. The band immediately struck up "The 
Star-Spangled Banner." His right hand was in- 
stantly at salute and remained so until our national 
air and "La Marseillaise" were finished. There 
he stood, a statuesque figure, the very impersona- 
tion and incarnation of West Point training and 
tradition, as fine a specimen of American-style, 
physical manhood as could be found in a month's 
search from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

When the music stopped. General Pershing 
stepped swiftly down the car steps to the platform. 
Ambassador Sharp introduced himself and wel- 
comed liim; then came Viviani. After the latter's 
effusive welcome Pershing turned a little to the 
right, and there stood "Papa" Joffre. I never 
want to see anything finer than the meeting of those 
two. Involuntarily, each stretched out both hands 
to the other. They stood face to face without a 
word. I have never seen such a smile as wreathed 
the face of the great marshal. It did not change 
in the course of the salutation. His eyes were so 
fixed in their gaze on the American general that 
they looked almost blind. There was no need for 
a word from Joffre. What he would have said 
was as plain as if he were shouting it: "You have 
come, God bless you! a splendid soldier from a 
people unconquerable in their greatness, to help 
saye France — my France! I know your country 



TO EUROPE WITH PERSHING 149 

and I know you, and the salvation of France is 
sure." After that the hand-shaking with Pain- 
leve, with the representatives from the Elysees, and 
even with Foch, seemed perfunctory. 

As the party moved toward the gate there was 
a shout — a real rebel yell. It had not only the 
volume, hut the tang in it ; it smote one's tympanum. 
It took me back to New York and the shouting for 
Joffre that rocked the Woolworth Tower. This 
rebel yell was repeated over and over again. It 
was even more tremendous when the party reached 
the street, and it was taken up and spread as by 
an electric current from square to square until it 
became faint in the distance. 

I was able to get a taxi and rode down the rue 
de Lafayette behind the military party. I have 
often seen Paris in a gala mood before, but to-day 
it was an entirely different Paris. The people on 
the street were either old or very young. The 
women greatly outnumbered the men. Every face 
wore a smile, not the happy, care-free smile of the 
old fete-days, but a smile that clearly came from 
a suffering heart, a heart that feels the world had 
turned so bad that hope has almost died, that the 
only good thing left is to meet whatever befalls with 
patience and courage. Then suddenly comes 
proof that there is good in the world after all; 
there are chivalrous hearts, generous impulses; 
there is kinship among men. For succor had come 



150 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

from far off, beautiful America. Here were the 
actual soldiers who were to be followed by hun- 
dreds of thousands of others, bringing not weapons 
only, but warm flesh and blood to help France. 

IN PARIS 

The American contingent has encountered in 
Paris a spell of weather that is homelike in its heat. 
Last night at the Hotel de Crillon I found that the 
orderlies who keep General Pershing's door were 
fairly panting. As I came out one of them said, 
"Would you mind using your influence with these 
hotel people to get us some ice-water?" I went to 
the oflice at once and made the request, which was 
promptly complied with. I followed it up to see 
that the thirsty dough-boys got the real thing, and 
I had the satisfaction of hearing the ice-water hiss 
as it went down their throats from an upturned 
carafe. 

Speaking of private soldiers, some of those who 
have come in with the suddenness of patriotic im- 
pulse are feeling a bit of the sting of distinction of 
rank. There is no place quite so unsafe for 
democracy as an army. On the ship it did n't make 
much difference. Those who had social position 
at home were able to maintain a certain equality. 
Now that distinctions of rank are necessary in deal- 
ing with the French Army, privates are privates; 
they cannot break through by virtue of some noii- 



TO EUROPE WITH PERSHING 151 

military influence. In some cases the result has 
been just a httle mortifying. Men of breeding and 
education who serve as interpreters, clerks, etc., are 
excluded from association with officers. This is not 
by any wish of the officers; it is simply military 
practice. Deviation is impossible. 

A burning question has been raised. By what 
name shall the American private be called? The 
Englishman is a Tommy, the Frenchman a Poilu. 
It has been suggested that Sarmny, in compliment 
to Uncle Sam, would be appropriate. And some 
one suggested Teddy. 

This expedition is one of the greatest experiences 
soldiers ever had, and our men are enjoying it. 
From the commander-in-chief down to the dough- 
boy, our khaki commands the attention on the 
streets that royal purple would get. The Ameri- 
can soldier is the cynosure of all eyes; the 
glances are intent, affectionate, caressing. But this 
life in France is n't all ambrosia. Now that the 
workaday part has begun, the officers are realizing 
that they can't continue to live at the expensive 
hotels, and are looking about for quarters more in 
keeping with their purses. Comfort and cheapness 
do not go hand in hand, and the officers are having 
considerable difficulty locating themselves satis- 
factorily. I met a lieutenant-colonel to-day in the 
arcade on the rue de Rivoli who was wrestling with 
this problem; 



152 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

"It is impossible to live decently in Paris on the 
salary of an officer and have enough left to support 
a family in America," he said, mopping his brow. 
Before I had gone another block I met a private 
whom I had come to know on the Baltic. "Hav- 
ing a fine time?" I asked. "So-so," he replied. 
"But let me tell you something. I was so hot last 
night that I had to have a drink of whisky. I went 
out and looked for it and I found it. But what 
do you think it cost me? Fifty cents! F-i-f-t-y 
c-e-n-t-s for one drink of whisky 1" 



CHAPTER X 

OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 
ARRIVAL 

July 1, 1917. As our party rode through the fair 
French country, every acre bursting with ripened 
plenty, there were many quarter hours of anxious 
silence, and it was an immense relief to find our 
gallant fellows all safe when we arrived at a port. 

We felt like making a round of the commanders 
and shaking hands on their outwitting Boche 
prowlers, and cabling congratulations to Washing- 
ton on excellent arrangements well carried out. In 
normal conditions it would be something of a feat 
to bring so many boats and men across the Atlantic 
without even a minor mishap ; to do it in the teeth of 
hostile submarines was to win America's first round 
against Germany. 

Aside from feeling that we had scored hand- 
someh'^ on this particular venture, there was solid 
satisfaction in the practical demonstration that 
troops in large numbers could be sent across the 
ocean, and that in the course of a few months an 
American army big enough to count in the final 
decision would surely be landed in France. 

153 



154 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

There was soon opportunity for more enthusiasm. 
We saw looming through the mist the shapes of 
other transports coming up to the dock. One of 
them passed so close that every face was visible. 
The docks were literally yellow with men. There 
must have been a thousand in sight. We could 
have shaken hands with those nearest us. There 
was not a sound from them, no singing, no shout- 
ing. Even when I hailed them and asked them 
about the voyage, there came back, and only from 
two or three, a single word, "Good," or "Fine." 
They had not found themselves in this strange 
country. They had had a long voyage, packed like 
sardines in transports menaced by a silent and in- 
visible enemy. They were a beautiful lot of young- 
sters, clean-limbed and bright-eyed. 

Just as the transport was abeam, somebody on 
the bridge called out through a megaphone: 
"Don't stand at the rail! You're not here for 
ornament!" There was a scampering, and two or 
three dozen men ran up a companion way below the 
bridge. When they had reached a barrier at the 
top they all yaulted it with the lightness of 
antelopes. 

We spent a good part of the day walking about 
among the newly arrived soldiers and were con- 
stantly stiiick with their intelligence and independ- 
ence. They came from a civilization in which 
equality and fraternity were genuine. They were 



OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 155 

real human beings; there was no stamp of the 
humihation that comes from habitual acknowledg- 
ment of social inferiority^ But this attitude does 
not interfere with their accepting military dis- 
cipline. West Point traditions are unbending in 
that matter. 

The troops were glad to touch earth after the 
long voyage, but among the recruits there was some 
reaction. A seaport town in a strange country on 
a rainy day does not redeem the promise made to 
the imagination of an adventuring youngster. 

It was pay-day, and in the afternoon the streets 
began to be crowded with kliaki-clad figures, and as 
the effect of the voyage wore off, there was in- 
creased curiosity and animation. ''Banque" was 
the first French word the soldiers had to tackle, and 
it gave them no trouble. "Bankwee" was their way 
of saying it. 

One of General Pershing's orderlies, who stood 
watching them go into a bank to get French money, 
growled patronizingly, as one knowing the country 
and having enormous experience, "They won't have 
a cent left to-morrow." 

Intensely interesting it was to watch this swarm 
from the West, to feel the vivid contrast with the 
European order and civilization, and to speculate 
on the effect of the linking of the two. It will be 
enormous and permanent. In parts of France to- 
day you see Mongolian types surviving from in- 



156 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

vasions centuries ago. Americans will leave their 
imprint here, and take home with them influences 
that may modify American thought. 

The arrest of two stevedores for using profane 
language fm'nished an amusing incident. They 
were carried off to the lockup in deference to 
French bystanders, though the objectionable 
language might very well have been thought by the 
said bystanders to have been American for ''Vive 
la France" 

Another amusing feature was the curiosity in one 
another shown by various kinds of negroes. I saw 
some of our good Southern darkies trying to make 
friends with black soldiers straight from Africa, and 
of course they could n't understand a word either 
said, though all of them looked exactly alike. 

The general and his staff arrived at the port at 
an early hour in the morning. The attitude of 
residents was one of mild interest and curiosity. 
There was no outburst such as greeted General 
Pershing in Paris. They were met by local officials 
and a fair-sized crowd, and drove at once to inspect 
the camp. Everybody was pleased at the results 
accomplished in so short a time. The camp seems 
sanitary and adequate. Naturally, work has only 
just begun; a war city will spring up here within 
a few months. 

We met one or two friends among naval officers, 
and I had the welcome opportunity of going aboard 



OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 157 

a destroyer. It was beautifully shipshape after the 
long voyage, and both officers and men were fresh 
and fit, despite their constant vigilance. To look 
into the faces of such men and hear their sensible 
and confident, but never boastful, talk, is to get 
re- Americanized. 

PARIS 

July 4, 1917. The appearance in Paris of 
organized soldiery from America come to fight the 
Germans side by side with the French, and their 
marching through the streets of Paris to ragtime 
music produced by their own bands in the presence 
of tremendous crowds, all on the anniversary of 
American independence, constituted one of the 
great historical occasions of all time. Next will 
come their occupation of their part of the line at 
the front, and then, let us hope, the realization of 
Judge Walter Berry's climax in to-day's speech, 
"Their arrival on the Rhine.'* 

I saw the show from many vantage-points from 
eight o'clock this morning until the finish. 

Everybody I saw was most impressed by the 
crowds. They might be bigger and noisier in New 
York, but I have never seen so many wearing their 
hearts on their sleeves as to-day. There were seas 
of faces everywhere, war-bitten, trustful, eager. 
Of young men there was almost complete absence. 
Women of all ages, young boys, old men, and tens 



158 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

of thousands of little children lined the streets. 
They had picked up broken bits of English, like, 
"Welcome," "Glad you 're here," and "Happy to 
see you," which they flung almost with sobs of 
laughter with the flowers they tossed upon the 
troops and into the carriages. 

A smile from any one wearing an American 
uniform awakened in their eyes an expression of 
delight that only Latins are capable of. I saw one 
old soldier in tears which he made no attempt to 
conceal while the ceremony was in progress at the 
Invalides. 

Although the infantry were mostly recruits, 
they made a splendid impression. It was a pity 
that it was impracticable to pick out a body of 
regulars only for an occasion from which Paris will 
have received a permanent impression. 

There was a wait of half an hour or more at the 
Hotel de Ville for rest and freshening up. There 
I fell in with a Frenchman, a drill-master, who had 
been handling American and English recruits. He 
commented favorably on our lot, which he had had 
opportunity to inspect closely. "As human beings 
and raw material they 're the very best," he said, 
"but they need a deal of training. The hardest 
thing to teach them is not to be too brave. They 
must learn first to hide. That 's the prime essential 
in this war. Bravery and human flesh are no good 



OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 159 

against machine-guns or barrage fire. Those 
splendid fellows will want to go right at the enemy- 
just as the English did, who are only now learning 
how to strike without risking themselves too much. 
Methods in this war are largely those of stealth; 
you must use men in combination with plenty of 
artillery, machine-guns, and air-planes. 

General Pershing rode with Major Margetts, 
passed us, and drew up for review on the Boulevard 
Diderot, where it is crossed by the avenue Dum- 
eril beyond the Bastille. A wee girl brought a 
bouquet, climbed on the running-board, and 
presented it to General Pershing, who smiled his 
pleasure. The spectators in this part of the city 
were of a class who would be ugly in a revolutionary 
period, but they were all smiles to-day. When the 
troops marched past, they were almost entirely 
hidden behind the crowds, mostly women running 
alongside. At the hospital entrance of the ceme- 
tery General Pershing joined Marshal Joffre, and 
they stayed together throughout the ceremony and 
sat together afterward. There was a tremendous 
press inside the cemetery. Many of the women 
were carrying babies, and the men were holding 
up floral pieces above their heads. Brand Whit- 
lock's address was a classic, and his characterization 
of German Kultur as "the camouflage of civiliza- 
tion" was most apt. Colonel Stanton gave us 



160 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

twenty minutes of old-fashioned Fourth of July 
eloquence, while General Pershing made his usual 
soldierly, two-minute address. 

FIELD HEADQUARTERS 

August 19, 1917. The contrast of the great 
numbers of Americans with this Old World en- 
vironment in which they find themselves never loses 
its vividness for me. To study this contrast be- 
tween new country and old country with all the 
advantage of juxtaposition excites an interest little 
short of thrilling. Never was there such a spectacle 
in all history as that of the fresh millions of free 
America flocking to the rescue of beleaguered and 
exhausted Europe. 

My heart was full when I mingled with my 
khaki-clad compatriots in the little valley that con- 
stitutes the field headquarters, but it was the full- 
ness of home feeling and familiarity, rather than 
pride. Having seen much, as I have recently, of 
the martial breed, I was just a bit disappointed to 
find myself in an atmosphere much less surcharged 
with war. Perhaps it is yet too early to expect 
otherwise, but as I went up and down among these 
young fellows, talking to as many as I could, they 
seemed still mothers' boys to me, specially my own 
Southerners with their soft accents. As soon as 
they knew that they were talking to a friend from 
home, they set up a cry for a popular brand of 




AT BAPAUME 



OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 161 

tobacco which cost ten cents, or perhaps less, in 
America, but which can't be bought here for less 
than as many francs per bag. All other kinds of 
tobacco are plentiful; only what the soldiers want 
is scarce. 

It is wonderful how these young chaps have 
settled down into the village life. Of course they 
don't speak French, but they manage to understand 
and make themselves understood. The popula- 
tion of the village is pretty much limited to women 
and children, and they have been captivated by the 
free and fearless friendship that the American boys 
promptly tendered to them. In the quiet summer 
night the French women sat five or six on a bench 
in front of their houses in the main street. I drew 
many of them out on the point of how they liked 
the change from deserted village conditions, which 
had prevailed previously. They were frankly 
charmed. They liked the American boys, indeed, 
loved them, they were so affectionate and consid- 
erate. "GentiV was the word most used. It had 
been a great change for the better since they had 
come to bring hfe and movement to their town and 
later. Heaven grant, to bring an end to the cruel 
war to which this one small community had con- 
tributed its whole manhood ; over sixty would never 
return. 

My room was in a neat little house tenanted by 
a young widow with five small daughters. She 



162 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

kept a store in the front part, let the rear room, 
and hved on the second floor. This house was a 
kind of headquarters for our soldiers. They petted 
the children, who in return taught them French, 
and the exchange was accounted mutually profit- 
able. I talked with the mother, and she said that 
the character and conduct of these young fellows 
had been a revelation to her. She specially com- 
mented on their inborn regard for women which 
one does n't see manifested so positively in a 
European country, and said they were always want- 
ing to do something for her, and as for the children, 
they idolized them. 

I saw soldiers drawn up in line awaiting a visit 
of inspection. As at the port when they arrived 
at the end of June, so here they won my spontaneous 
admiration as raw material for an army. They 
were all in good health and spirits, but not yet, 
so far as I could judge, inoculated with any particu- 
lar militarism. I could n't help being reminded of 
an encampment of State militia. 

I was not content to be constantly shown around, 
but wandered about alone part of a day, seeing 
as much as I could in a short time. I inspected 
two kitchens, and found them clean, with excellent 
food and cooking. I climbed to a hayloft in which 
twenty-five men were billeted. A half-dozen were 
sitting on the floor eating a midday dinner of beef 
stew, white bread, and coffee. It looked and 



OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 163 

smelled good. This loft was taken care of by an 
old "Dick Deadeye" of a Frenchman, who was 
evidently enjoying his experiences to the full, and 
referred to the soldiers as his "amis" but I was 
somewhat disappointed to notice that "Dick's" 
general friendliness extended to the spiders, who 
had spun their webs at will under the roof. 

I dined at the division officers' mess in one 
village and at the battalion officers' mess in another, 
and in both had good food and enjoyed real Ameri- 
can hospitality. At one of these meals I had a 
chance to get the regular-army officers' side of the 
question of promotion, as I had before heard the 
reserve officers'. I sat next to a captain who had 
enlisted thirty-two years ago. He served thirteen 
years as a private and non-commissioned officer. 
It had taken him nineteen years to pass from 
second lieutenant to captain. Perhaps a case like 
this may suggest a new line of thought to your 
reserve officers of a few months who grow im- 
patient at delay in promotion. 

I went from one village to another until I found 
myself at the very end of the American field head- 
quarters. My visit had fallen out fortunately, for 
in this last lot I found what I had been wishing 
for. Here it was not a case of hundreds of young 
soldiers strewn about anyhow; there was organiza- 
tion, atmosphere, authority ; you might be shot, but 
it would be for cause and not by accident. 



164 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

I suppose I would not be permitted to identify 
the troops to whom I refer. But I know that 
General Petain identified them. They had waited 
from eight in the morning till five at night to be 
inspected. When the generals came, these troops, 
showing not the faintest sign of fatigue, went 
through the appropriate portion of drill with beauti- 
ful precision and snap. What was the difference 
between this regiment and the others? As far as 
I could learn, the proportion of regulars and re- 
cruits was precisely the same. Apparently the 
difference lay chiefly in the possession by this regi- 
ment not only of its own officers, but its own 
history and traditions. Pride in a past stimulated 
new men to strenuous exertion. It was obvious 
that this regiment might be profitably used as a 
pace-maker for other regiments. Just as here the 
regulars gave the cue to the recruits, so could the 
example of the regiment as a whole be made potent 
to arouse a spirit of emulation throughout the whole 
new army. Here are soldiers ready at the blowing 
of a bugle to go in against the Germans. Their 
village is a Spotless Town. They wash their own 
clothes every night; their leather and metal are 
bright with polishing; they move smartly; they are 
every inch of them soldiers from head to heel. 

As the army organization progresses, the 
experience of this regiment, as well as of all regi- 
ments in the English army, would seem to point 



OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 165 

to the adoption of names for different units. 
Tradition is evolved out of a name and preserved 
in it. Pride in youi' regiment works wonders. 
Who can recall without a thrill such names as Cold- 
stream Guards, Black Watch, Grenadier Guards, 
Gordon Highlanders, Dublin Fusiliers, Royal 
Fusiliers? The only approach to a parallel that 
we have in our army seems to have helped to pro- 
duce a result that is most excellent, even when 
judged by expert European standards. 

I dined at the officers' mess of this regiment, and 
if anything could have increased my sense of satis- 
faction, it was the information elicted by comparing 
notes at the table. Of the six regimental officers 
present four were Virginians. 

"Oh, carry me back! Carry me back] 
To old Virginny's sho!" 

HUGE TONNAGE NEEDS OF OUR ARMY ABROAD 

The American army in France will need some 
transporting. Here are figures that are at least 
approximately correct. 

It is estimated that one hundred pounds of 
freight per man per day must be unloaded at the 
port of debarkation. Therefore, when at the end 
of two years we have, say, one million men in 
France, we must unload daily one hundred million 
pounds or fifty thousand tons of freight. 



166 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Three thousand tons can be unloaded daily from 
a good-sized ship; hence seventeen ships at the 
wharves, each of them unloading three thousand 
tons, will fill the requirements. In the United 
States seventeen ships must be loading fifty- 
thousand tons a day. This makes a total of thirty- 
four ships at the docks. Taking as a basis a six- 
thousand ton (dead weight) ship, we see that 
seventeen ships must leave New York every two 
days and seventeen ships leave some French port 
every two days in transit with army freight. 
Assuming ten days as the time of passage, there 
would be one hundred and seventy ships (six 
thousand tons) en route to and from the United 
States, which added to the thirty -four at the docks 
will make a total of two hundred and four ships, 
assuming no loss or delay. 

To indicate the quantities of certain articles re- 
quired, fuel for cooking for six months, on a basis 
of half a cord a day per hundred men, would 
amount to thirteen thousand, five hundred cords 
and owing to the scarcity of fuel, part of tliis may 
have to be brought to France. 

With one million men there will be approx- 
imately two hundred thousand animals. At 
fourteen pounds of hay a day, there would be re- 
quired for six months over four hundred and fifty- 
six million pounds of hay, which must be imported, 
and also three hundred and sixty million pounds 



OUR ARMY IN FRANCE 167 

of oats. Rations will require eight hundred and 
fifteen million pounds. Ammunition will run into 
billions of pounds. 

This freight calculation does not consider what 
would be required in building and rebuilding rail- 
roads or cantonments. The space required for 
storehousing at the base would be about as follows : 
Rations, etc., two hundred and fifty acres ; fuel, one 
hundred and fifty acres ; forage, four hundred and 
fifty acres ; remount depots, two hundred and fifty 
acres; cantonments for casuals, etc., eight hmidred 
acres; sick and wounded, one thousand acres; 
engineer, ordnance, and signal corps, fifteen 
hundred acres. Allowing for roads, office-build- 
ings, barracks, etc., the total would be about five 
thousand acres. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE AGONY OF FRANCE 

The ruined towns of Belgium and France have 
been written about so much that we have all become 
case-hardened, and I was surprised at the fierce- 
ness of my own reaction to such wanton acts as ap- 
pear in the ruins of Peronne, Bapaume and Arras. 
I was reminded of what Sir Johnston Forbes- 
Robertson had said on the destruction of priceless 
architecture by the Boclie. He set it down as a 
greater injury to mankind than the loss of life. 
The latter was replaceable, but the spirit that, com- 
ing forth from the great silences of a past without 
railroads, telegraphs, or other modern conveniences, 
had expressed itself in painting, poetry, and archi- 
tecture, would perhaps never return to the world, 
and so the works that it had created and left behind 
could never be produced. 

Take Peronne, for example. Here, in a vale on 
the Somme, a country town was built four or five 
hundred years ago with a poetic taste and artistic 
enterprise not possible to-day in any city of any 
size and wealth. When the Germans saw that they 
could hold Peronne no longer they dynamited every 

168 



THE AGONY OF FRANCE 169 

single building that had been left, including the 
beautiful cathedral and city hall. In the former 
was found a facetious notice in English: "Don't 
be annoyed, but admire." 

Peronne was literally pounded to a pulp. There 
was not a cubic yard of it left whole. 

Nor does this state of ruin fully convey the 
extent of Boche meanness and devihy. Take the 
placard, "Don't be annoyed, but admire," and apply 
the spirit in a thousand ways, little and big, and 
even then there will come only a hint of the Boche 
nature in war. For example, sewage deposits were 
thinly covered over with coal to deceive the French 
into thinking for a moment that some supply of 
fuel had been left. 

When I saw and heard these things, I recalled 
with less skepticism the stories I had heard from 
the Americans who had come away from Berlin. 
To give a single instance, one doctor reported this 
scene to which he had been an eye-witness: there 
was an idiot in the village near a prison camp. One 
day an automobile ran over him crushing his legs at 
the knees. He lay in the street, screaming with 
agony, while around him gathered a crowd that 
laughed loudly at what they regarded as sport. 

I have since heard similar stories from officers 
personally known to me who have given me chapter 
and verse. For example, the binding and burning 
of wounded prisoners by the Boche is vouched for 



170 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

by a second lieutenant with whom I played golf 
at St. Andrews before the war, and in whose bona 
fides I have the utmost confidence. I have never 
before felt quite willing to accept the stories of war 
cruelty at par. 

One needs to go no further than the physical evi- 
dence of barbarous destruction at Peronne, Ba- 
paume, and Arras to justify the feeling that the 
German has so long and so fully surrendered him- 
self to cumulative war impulses and war education 
that he is at last a different being from the rest. 
Kipling's classification of the world's people into 
"human beings and Germans" is not wide of the 
mark, and a visit to the cities wantonly ruined by 
the Germans with their overwhehning testimony of 
unspeakable brutality compel an acceptance of 
extremist views in respect to the method of dealing 
with Germany. The good in that country must 
suffer with the bad, for it is the bad who have been 
permitted to have full, unbridled sway. 

It was a relief to return from such scenes to the 
pleasant chateau where I was a guest, and the talk 
of fellow-visitors, among them General Georgiesco, 
the Rumanian lieutenant-general, who represents 
the supreme militarj?^ command of his country at 
the British front. 

He gave me an interesting idea of the strategic 
situation of France. The frontier of France, he 
said, bent back from Switzerland on the south- 



THE AGONY OF FRANCE 171 

east to the channel on the northwest. Forces de- 
fending the country, therefore were precisely in the 
position of a man trying to fight while leaning so 
far backward as to lose his equilibrium. General 
Joffre's problem was to square himself round to 
the German attack, and this he had successfully 
done. 

General Georgiesco was at the front partly to 
inspect the Portugese troops, who are much in ev- 
idence in the Bethune neighborhood and near the 
base. They are eager for military duty and when 
well led shall make a good showing. 

There were some members of the British govern- 
ment at the chateau. A subject of conversation 
was the new financial position brought about by 
America's coming in. The importance of freeing 
England from the strain of financing the Allies 
single-handed can hardly be overstated. It had 
reached the back-breaking point. America's open- 
handedness with her boundless resources has not 
only removed the danger of disaster through ex- 
haustion, but has enabled Britain to turn with a 
comparatively free mind to her own particular prob- 
lems of perfecting her great military machine and 
providing protection against the submarine. 

KHEIMS 

This ruined French town has become a place of 
pilgrimage, like Jerusalem or Mecca. To come to 



172 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Rheims is a pious act. From every corner of the 
globe people find their way to this ghost of a city 
for spiritual rebirth, and to pledge themselves anew 
to the overthrow of brute force that has here shown 
itself at its foulest. 

It is here that the conviction of German crim- 
inality becomes irresistible, for, alas! the sight of 
Rheims destroys the power to think of Germany 
in sections. The kaiser is a vandal and a murderer, 
and his people particeps criminis. It is all one 
monstrous, brutal Germany, the unprotesting good 
only serving the dominant bad the better by their 
supine goodness. 

The cathedi-al is a pitiful spectacle. You ahnost 
burst into tears at sight of it. And yet the poor 
mutilated remains of one of the noblest of all the 
works of man may serve an even greater purpose 
than the church ever did in its perfect wholeness. 
Out of its destruction has sprung a spiritual temple, 
an intangible, but very real, structure in the heart 
of the world. 

The battered ruin has done more to recreate rev- 
erence on earth than any church ever built. It also 
serves another great purpose. In every fight be- 
tween right and wrong there is an micertainty as 
to where one begins and the other leaves off. JVIoral 
confusion is often the worst feature of such a strug- 
gle. In this mightiest of all moral contests, Rheims 
js tangible, monumental, unmistakable testimony. 



THE AGONY OF FRANCE 173 

Rheims, Louvain, Ypres, Arras, Lille, Peronne — 
but the greatest of these is Rheims. 

The cathedral as it stands to-day is the inde- 
structible record of Prussian villainy. There can 
be no distortion of facts or truth. Lying and sub- 
terfuge will avail nothing here. The cruel wounds 
here inflicted write the doom of Prussianism. 

And "when ye spread forth your hands, I will 
hide mine eyes from you : yea, when ye make many 
prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of 
blood." 

I am visiting Rheims in a rain-storm. The scene 
is one of complete and utter desolation. The cathe- 
dral has been the target of German gunners, and 
everything in the line of fire, including an area ap- 
parently about half a mile by a mile, which takes 
in the heart of Rheims, has been shattered. 

There seemed a sad irony in the fact that while 
such buildings as the beautiful city hall have been 
destroyed, the hideous new court house immediately 
opposite the cathedral has so far escaped. The fa- 
mous equestrian statue of the Maid of Orleans is 
still intact, although there is a big shell hole within 
a few feet of it. 

The state of the cathedral has been described over 
and over again. There has been no intense bom- 
bardment recently, but whenever the Boche finds 
things dull he fires a shot or two at the church. 
Each month the destruction is worse than it was the 



174 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

previous month. Every sort of projectile, from a 
three-inch to a sixteen-inch shell has been shot into 
the great pile. 

One of the main Gothic columns supporting the 
transept has been shattered, and the whole central 
portion of the super-structure appears to be on the 
point of collapse. The famous rose-window has 
been shot out, but I am happy to learn that much 
of the priceless stained glass of other windows was 
removed to a place of safety. 

My visit to Rheims was under a very dis- 
tinguished escort. I was with Captain Gerard de 
Ganay, who is one of the heads of the great Creusot 
munition works, which bears the same relation to 
France that Krupp's does to Germany. 

Of course we visited Cardinal Lu^on. His pal- 
ace has been destroyed, and he has moved to one of 
the parish buildings across the street. There he 
holds the fort, shells or no shells. 

He is a hero without any heroics. He tells the 
story of his experiences with feeling, lighted up 
now and again with humor. We sat in a circle 
around him, and listened with enchanted interest, 
watching the while the play of his mobile face. 
Before saying good-by, I asked if his Eminence had 
any message for America. 

"Yes," he replied promptly; and as he spoke one 
of the party translated his words into English. 
The translation follows: 



THE AGONY OF FRANCE 175 

Through the "New York Times" I send my salutations to 
the United States in the name of my city, my diocese, and 
my comitry. We thank you for your cooperation in the fight 
which we are carrying on for the defense of the principles of 
right, of humanity, and respect for treaties, which are the 
safeguards of the peace of nations. I thank you also for the 
charitable offerings which you have sent us for relieving the 
misery caused by the war. 

The venerable prelate went with us to the door 
and even followed us outside, where he stood uncov- 
ered in the rain, so gi'eat was his interest in our 
visit. In saying adieu to him at last, I ventured 
to tell him how great a part his own courage and 
devotion played in the American conception of the 
destruction of Rheims. And I may add that at this 
assurance of our appreciation he was frankly 
pleased. 

We went to the French trenches opposite the 
point where much of the artillery fire is rained on 
the cathedral by the Germans, and looked our 
strafe at them from the front line across a few 
acres of no-man's-land. All was very quiet on this 
sector, but a few miles fm*ther west there was in- 
tense activity, probably in connection with the great 
offensive since so successfully developed. 

Not even in Alsace have I experienced a more 
charming welcome and hospitality than in these 
trenches in front of Rheims. The faces of the offi- 
cers were literally beaming with trust and affection. 



176 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

not for me, but for my glorious country. As we 
turned back from the remotest front, the officer who 
had had charge of us bade us good-by, as his route 
lay in the opposite direction. 

In a few seconds there came the sound of some 
one overtaking us at a run. I turned round, and 
there was the officer back again. "America for- 
ever!" he was crying, "Au revoir and America for- 
ever!" Who but a Frenchman would have such a 
pretty emotion and give way to it? It may be 
deep as a well or shallow as a brook, I care not. It 
is brightness in this vale of tears. 

When we got back to the hoyau trenches, where 
the headquarters of the sector were, we went into 
the semi-subterranean quarters of the captain and 
sat down, a party of eight, for a discussion of what 
we had seen. There was the inevitable bottle of 
wine to put good fellowship in flow. It was inter- 
ested to observe that in the very heart of the Cham- 
pagne country the tipple was Italian Asti. 

After three quarters of an hour of comradely 
communion we said good-by and then turned and 
shook hands a second time with men who almost 
certainly had an early tryst with death and yet 
apparently never gave it a thought. They were 
a light-hearted company ; it was we who were sad. 

This sadness deepened as we reentered the ruined 
city in the darkness. There was scarcely a light 



THE AGONY OF FRANCE 177 

anywhere. When we passed a house that had a 
Hght in it we surmised that it must be an undertaker 
catching up with his work. 

I must not omit mention of a hero of my own 
craft. Within a few feet of the apse of the cathe- 
dral, across a narrow wind, is what is left of the 
office and plant of the Rheims paper, "L'Eclaireur 
de I'Est." 

This paper comes out daily, about six inches 
square, folio, and it has never missed an issue. Its 
plant has been shot all to pieces. A pressman lost 
his life while operating a hand-press. 

It used to be a fine little plant, with three or 
four linotypes and as many presses for newspaper 
and job work, and the building was commodious and 
suitable. When I paid my visit to-day, there was 
scarcely a whole piece of machinery in the shop. 
The roof and floors were full of holes, and the 
mechanics work in the rain. The floors and the 
contents of the building were sopping wet, and the 
conditions were altogether as miserable as it was 
possible to imagine. 

There was one discord in this diapason of melan- 
choly. Everybody was cheerfully busy. Every 
face beamed happiness and good humor. Back of 
it all there must be a chivalrous heart that is proof 
against trial. I was sorry not to have the chance 
of shaking the hand of the editor and proprietor, 



178 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

but he had gone out when I called. His was the 
indomitable spirit ; that I could tell by the way the 
employes spoke of him. He has the name to go 
with such a character and career — Paul Dramas. 
Good luck and long life to you, Monsieur Dramas! 



CHAPTER XII 

IN SWITZERLAND 

Bern, August 8, 1917. Switzerland is the ren- 
dezvous of nations, but the line between the bellig- 
erents is severely drawn. In Bern many of the 
diplomatic gi-oup live at the principal hotel. The 
secretaries from the German legation have a big 
table in one corner of the dining-room, where they 
talk gaily at meal-times, but as they go in and come 
out, passing former friends among the American 
secretaries, they are stone-blind, and so are the 
Americans. 

Switzerland, and especially Bern, the capital, is 
at present a beehive of German propagandism. 
Politicians from Berlin, German diplomatists in the 
service, German business men with international 
connections, German- American journalists, are all 
putting out talk intended to filter through and cre- 
ate the impressions desired. 

Those Germans charged with the management of 
this war are believers in "putting things over" or 
under, as the case may be, and the Zeppelin and 
the U-boat correctly present the war mind of 
Germany. Nothing comes about spontaneously. 

179 



180 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Great principles count for naught. Right and jus- 
tice are empty words. The race is to the swift, the 
battle to the strong. A lie is as good as, yea, better 
than the truth if you can make it stick, for the 
strong and the clever can "make the worse appear 
the better reason." 

That is the brand of German Kultur that one sees 
and feels in Switzerland, and it is probably predom- 
inant in these times in the direction of the affairs 
of Germany. I do not say that the whole German 
people have lost all sobriety, love of truth, and sin- 
cerity. But Germany is the country of discipline. 
There is leadership, and the people trust and obey 
it. It has thus come about that a leadership of 
lies, of lust of power and self-seeking, has had the 
support of the enfeebled moral sense of a people 
of whom the great majority are individually sound 
and right-loving. 

Either because it suits the German stage-manage- 
ment, or because neither the fact nor the knowledge 
of it can any longer be suppressed, the impression 
is spreading in Switzerland that the scales are fall- 
ing from the eyes of the German people. This im- 
pression comes to me necessarily second-hand and 
largely through Swiss intermediaries. 

There is a law forbidding communications with 
citizens of an enemy country. Germans come to 
Switzerland by the thousand. Politicians like Herr 
Erzberger, leader of the Catholic party, come, hoist 



IN SWITZERLAND 181 

a flag of truce, and invite peace parleys. Some may 
be acting in sincere good faith. Yet it is harder for 
a German to get a hearing than for the proverbial 
camel to pass through the pedestrian's gate of the 
city. The Germans have only themselves to thank. 
They have trifled with world confidence and have 
lost it. 

What is here set down comes from German 
sources and must be discounted accordingly. I hear 
that there has been a marked change in Germany, 
specially in these latter months. The recent action 
of the Reichstag (by its action in July, 1917,) fur- 
nishes testimony that carries conviction to all who 
are familiar with German conditions. It is claimed 
that it shows two things of enormous significance: 

1. That public opinion has established itself as a 
force in the exact sense that it is a force in democ- 
racies, and is already more potent than the kaiser. 

2. That public opinion is for peace on terms humil- 
iating to neither the Entente nor the Central Alhes, 
that is, peace without indemnity, annexation, or 
commercial boycott. 

Germany's standing out against indemnities is 
not to be referred to financial reasons. It means 
that she is not willing to put herself to her people, 
to her posterity, and to the world, in a position of 
having waged a wicked war. She feels keenly the 
isolation she has been forced into by having twenty- 
four nations arrayed against her. She knows that 



182 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

she will have to face a hostile and scornful world. 
But she can, and does, feel now as if her moral 
isolation is the result of the misunderstanding of 
the rest of the world. 

The payment of an indemnity would write her 
down a felon in her own eyes and those of the world. 
She will shed her last drop of blood before accepting 
such humiliating terms. 

All the claims of liberalization must be discounted 
by the undeniable fact that the kaiser remains strong 
with the people. His service to the country before 
the war was entered upon, his devotion to work, 
his religious character, and the family life led by 
him, supplemented by the fine character of the 
kaiserin, make it difficult for any sentiment against 
the Hohenzollern dynasty to gain headway. 

Probably a majority of the people want some 
form of democracy, but they retain a sense of loy- 
alty to the present sovereign. The kaiser is per- 
sonally much stronger than Pan-Germanism, which, 
specially outside of Germany, makes a noise out 
of all proportion to its numbers. The Pan-German 
papers that are so much quoted in London, Paris, 
and New York are journals of small circulation and 
influence, the most important having only about ten 
thousand circulation, as against, say, half a million 
for the largest socialist paper. 

Relations with Austria are said to give no anxiety 



IN SWITZERLAND 183 

in Germany, for the latter has an unbreakable grip 
on the Austrian Army. After the breakdown in 
the face of Brusiloff 's drive the Austrian Army was 
reorganized by Germany, which, it is claimed, has a 
majority of the rank and file, and virtually all the 
higher officers in every regiment. Austria-Hun- 
gary is powerless, and if she attempted to make a 
separate peace, what Viemia could deliver to the 
Entente wouldn't be worth the offense that such 
a move would give to Italy. 

The people of Germany are represented as being 
in a quiet state of mind and ready for all sacrifices, 
provided only that the Government shall seize the 
first opportmiity for peace without humiliation. It 
is claimed that there is n't the slightest danger of 
strangulation by blockade. Oil is coming from 
Rumania, and more and more will be received ; grain 
will come from the same source later in the season. 
There is the gi'eatest care in the use of munitions, 
but this is a matter of policy rather than of necessity. 
In air-planes Germany is relatively stronger than 
a few months ago. 

Paper money is abundant and serves every pur- 
pose, for Germany has very little international 
trade that calls for real money. The very poor are 
better off than in times of peace, as are the very 
rich. 

To sum up the claims implied by current talk 



184 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

among Swiss people who have German connections, 
inside conditions in Germany may be briefly stated 
as follows: 

First, Bethmann's resignation and Michaelis's 
appointment were the result of a real political 
crisis arising from deep-seated and significant con- 
ditions. 

Secondly, Germany realizes the importance of 
America's entry into the war, and realizes also that 
the next six months will probably offer a more 
favorable time for peace than after America's army 
has taken its place on the western front. 

Thirdly, The four-party coalition, which con- 
trolled the Reichstag by a large majority, repre- 
sents public opinion in equal or greater proportion. 
The resolution adopted voices such a genuine desire 
for peace on the terms therein promulgated that 
Michaelis will be obliged to adhere to them or to 
resign. 

Fourthly, There is a real public opinion in Ger- 
many to-day that, while not antagonistic to him, is 
in some measure independent of the kaiser. This 
is increasingly aggressive in its effort to enforce its 
demands, and means a distinct and definite advance 
toward liberal government. 

Fifthly, June marked the low point in food 
supply. Green vegetables have somewhat im- 
proved conditions, and the near approach of harvest 
temporarily relieves the strain. 



IN SWITZERLAND 185 

Sixthly, The opinion is divided as to whether the 
submarine is coming up to reasonable expectations, 
but the majority sentiment is that the benefit of un- 
restricted U-boat war does n't offset the danger and 
loss involved in America's coming in. The press 
under orders from Hindenburg has recently been 
emphasizing submarine effectiveness, and there is 
increasing popular optimism on that subject. 

If man-power is declining, it is not visible to 
civilian observation. Supplies of war material are 
sufficient, and military conditions generally have 
suffered no impairment. 

The accounts of the political crisis are interesting. 
There has been a growing impatience with Beth- 
mann-HoUweg. He came to be regarded as inver- 
tebrate and inefficient, as well as a sort of Jonah. 
Germany had had numerous victories ; for example, 
the defeat of Russia in 1915, the conquest of Ru- 
mania, the showing made by the submarines, and 
always the war map, which an abler chancellor might 
have turned to account in bringing the war to an 
end. In these circumstances a peace should have 
been concluded on some favorable occasion any time 
in the last two years and nine months. 

From the battle of the Marne on, it was clear 
that the typical Prussian victory by onset alone was 
not for this time. The German public has grown 
hungrier for peace, but the chancellor failed to react 
to the German impulse; he conciliated, discussed. 



186 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

postponed, paltered, and, trying to please every- 
body, has pleased nobody. 

Finally, public opinion working on the Reichstag 
brought about an untenable position for Bethmann. 
The four-party coalition was the direct result of 
the popular unrest, of the demand of the people for 
an energetic initiative for peace. There are three 
hundred and seventy-nine votes in the Reichstag. 
Of these the Centrists, or Catholics, have ninety- 
one; the Socialists, eighty-nine; the National Lib- 
erals, (businessmen,) forty-f our ; the Progressives, 
forty. This coalition thus controlled a large ma- 
jority, but it was not altogether homogeneous. 

The three main causes of unrest were the desire 
for peace, dissatisfaction with the voting system in 
Prussia, and the wish of other German states to 
have it regularized, and dissatisfaction with Beth- 
mann. The trouble was that all the members of 
the four parties could n't be lined up on all three 
proposals. 

It was at this stage that Herr Erzberger con- 
cluded to "start something," and the bomb that he 
threw led to an excitement and stampede that con- 
solidated the position. In vain the chancellor 
pulled his wires. Even the mysterious hints set 
afloat that the Emperor Charles wanted him re- 
tained were unavailing. 

There was some disappointment among members 
of the four-party coalition at Dr. Michaelis's speech 



IN SWITZERLAND 187 

on his assumption of the chancellorship. In his 
official relation with the Prussian diet he will do 
all that can be done, which is to communicate the 
desire of the Reichstag for voting reform in 
Prussia. This is, after all, a matter for Prussia, 
just as it is a matter for Maryland to say who 
shall and shall not vote for members of her general 
assembly; at least, that is the contention of those 
who are opposed to any change in Prussia. 

Unless there is some change in the military aspect 
that causes a revulsion in popular sentiment, the 
chancellor must proceed with the peace program 
when the Reichstag reassembles in September, — or 
at the call of the President before that, — or the 
coalition will compel the kaiser to name a new 
premier. The power of the Reichstag is not direct, 
but as it holds the purse-strings, it can, theoretically 
at least, dictate policy even to the kaiser. 

The food situation is represented as less acute. 
June was the hard month. The people stood the 
strain because they believed that peace was coming. 
The idea of peace had got abroad and was almost 
an obsession. The Government had spread it, and 
the masses suffered patiently because they believed 
that the Government was moving toward peace. 

When popular discontent over starvation and 
other sacrifices became menacing, speeches of allied 
orators or editorials from newspapers were quoted 
and emphasized to show that Germany must endure 



188 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

to the end on peril of her destruction. The answer 
of the Entente last December to Germany's peace 
suggestion has been used over and over again to 
show Germans that they must fight or die. 

The attitude toward America is a mixture of fear 
and contempt, at least among the militarists who 
are in charge of tliis war. They would like to think 
that the Spanish and Mexican Wars furnish the 
scale by which American capacity for war is to be 
measured. But when they look at American re- 
sources in wealth and population, and when they 
turn to the direct evidence of German-born citizens 
in America as to her earnestness and purpose, their 
contempt fades into fear, and they quail at the pros- 
pect. 

The talk now put out here is that Germany real- 
izes that America is sure to come in with all her 
weight, and that because of tliis, Germany must take 
whatever steps for peace she has in mind within the 
next few months. It is declared that Germany 
carefully refrains from any act that might inflame 
America toward her and thereby accelerate her 
preparations. It would be possible, they say, to 
torpedo American transports and passenger ships, 
but submarine commanders have rigid instructions 
not to touch them. 

Unless compelled by circumstances, Germany 
will do nothing to rouse American fighting spirit, 
and will hope that peace can be concluded before 



IN SWITZERLAND 189 

America gets into the trenches "with both feet," or 
that the submarine can so reduce shipping tonnage 
as to make transport on a large scale impossible 
within the next six months, except at the cost of 
starving England and France or cutting off sup- 
plies for the Entente armies. 

August 9, 1917. This was a day set for a visit 
to the English internment camp at Mlirren. It is 
a four hours' ride by way of Interlaken and Lauter- 
brunnen ; thence there is a climb of about two thou- 
sand feet by a funicular railroad, follov/ed by a few 
miles' ride on the very edge of a precipice that com- 
mands a matchless view of the noble peaks opposite. 

Miirren occupies a peninsula about one third of 
the altitude of the Jungfrau, 4167 meters high. It 
faces the great granite fortress that is the Jung- 
frau's base, of which the walls seem less than a 
golf drive distant, but are actually more than two 
miles. The top of Jungfrau would be five miles, 
as the crow flies, with the Monch and Eiger in 
full view on the left. Between the granite base 
and the snow line are green stretches on which, they 
told us, chamois were even then grazing, but they 
were not visible to the naked eye. 

There is nowhere in the world a finer scenic 
beauty than at and from Miirren, but one must n't 
speak of it to the soldiers. They 're "fed up" on 
scenery. All the same, when it 's all over and they; 



190 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

get back to Blighty, and peace comes with its chores 
and hardships, many a time they 11 recall what 
happy days those were at Miirren. 

There are now about four hundred British sol- 
diers, including about twenty officers, interned at 
Miirren. The camp was opened in August, 1916. 
All but a small percentage are wounded men, and 
most of them came from prison hospitals in Ger- 
many. They tell of their experiences in these hos- 
pitals with wry faces. 

The men are mostlj^ English, but Canada, Aus- 
tralia, and even America, are represented. Max- 
well, a Philadelphian of Scotch parentage, who en- 
listed as a private with the Canadians, has charge 
of the shop where watches are repaired. There is 
also a carpenters' shop, a printing-office, which turns 
out a camp newspaper about once a month, a tailor's 
shop, and a chauffeurs' school. The latter has 
graduated a number of men who are running cars in 
various parts of Switzerland. 

There is a dentist who has treated four thousand 
teeth in his camp. His wife helps him, and they 
have won the gratitude of the men for their devoted 
and skilful service. There is a good Y. M. C. A. 
organization, with nice quarters and a hall where 
entertainments are given. 

As it was a brilliant day, games of cricket, associ- 
ation foot-ball, and hockey were in full swing this 
afternoon. "Not much sign of weakness and 



IN SWITZERLAND 191 

wounds in that lot," I remarked to the lieutenant 
colonel as we watched the gay scene from a bench 
that commanded a view of all three games. "Ah! 
but you should have seen them when they came 
here!" he replied. The foot-ball team was prac- 
tising for a go with the Bern team the next Sunday. 
There is a base-ball game now and again. 

There are a great many glass eyes. I talked with 
an Irish officer who had one almost as good to look 
at as the good eye. "I had some made in Geneva," 
he said. "Jolly good eyes they make in Geneva!" 
He was a young fellow about twenty-four or 
twentj^-five. At first I didn't recognize his race, 
and asked what part of England he was from. "I 
am not an Englishman," he snapped back. He was 
a Dublin man. ^Vhen I inquired where he had 
been hit, he couldn't remember the name of the 
place for a minute or two and screwed up his face 
in the effort. "Oh, yes, Thiepval," he said, "the 
bally name" suddenly coming back to him. 

All the world remembers Thiepval and the gal- 
lant work of the Connaught Rangers on July 1, 
1916, but a Connaught officer shot on that day has 
dwelt so little on the episode that he must have time 
before he can recall the name of the place. A 
rifle bullet entered his right cheek, passed through 
the eye, and came out above the bridge of the nose. 

He was greatly interested in the Flanders battle. 
"Do you think it is going to be a really big show?" 



tl92 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

he asked. He was sorry that there didn't seem 
much chance of his going back home. He and all 
other officers I talked with were very keen on 
getting with the Americans to train recruits. They 
dread winter at Miirren not only because of the 
cold, but because deep snow covers the whole place 
except one street, which is kept clear and affords 
the only chance of outdoor exercise. 

The officer under whose guidance I looked about 
was a captain in the Buifs. His battalion was 
wiped out at Loos in September, 1915, and he was 
badly wounded, and captured by the Germans. He 
was a stock-exchange broker and enlisted in August, 
1914. His family have joined him at Miirren, and 
they have a nice cottage on the side of the moun- 
tain. 

The village itself is extremely picturesque. The 
streets, which are little more than walks and the 
prettier for being narrow and winding, have been 
rechristened with London names, the usual Picca- 
dilly, Fleet Street, Strand, Edgware Road, and 
Regent Street. Further to carry out the illusion 
of the big city on the Thames the plainer end is 
called Whitechapel. 

The officers and soldiers are quartered in the well- 
known Hotel des Alpes. The back building is 
given over to the Tommies, who have nice, neat 
rooms with two or three single beds in each. It 
makes you cry to see the walls of these rooms with 

I 



IN SWITZERLAND 193 

their profusion of photographs from home, wives, 
children, fathers, mothers, sisters. 

It was a pleasant disappointment to find such a 
gay company, and to see such good progress in re- 
covery from wounds. The day impressed me anew 
with the wonderful recuperative powder of man and 
his ability to adapt himself to almost any situation. 

August 10, 1917. I went with the American 
minister to see some English Tommies start for 
home after a long internment in Switzerland. 
They were all typical wounded convalescents, this 
one lacking a leg, that one an arm, another an eye, 
a fourth paralyzed. There were two affected pre- 
cisely ahke and very strangely. Through shell- 
shock or otherwise they had been so shaken that 
every minute was agony unless both hands were 
immersed in ice-vv^ater. This relief had been 
worked out by wide experimentation in the hospital. 
They were provided with ice to last them to Paris. 
Except for the pecuhar nervous trouble, both men 
were physically fit. 

An interesting chap who was on the platform to 
see the soldiers off was a young oflScer with one arm, 
who is now an interne in Bern. He was an airman, 
and his machine was brought down by a German 
avion. It fell two miles and was shattered to bits. 
The pilot was killed instantly. The young officer 
was terribly mangled, and his case was regarded as 



194 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

hopeless, but he got well, except that his left arm 
had to be amputated. He is a cheery chap and very 
popular in Bern society. 

JNIinister Stovall and I walked away from the 
station toward the hotel, recalHng the contrast be- 
tween these war days and the time when we last met 
at the Baltimore convention in 1912. A gentleman 
passed us and saluted the minister. "That is a for- 
mer President of Switzerland," he remarked. Mr. 
Stovall has found the work here interesting and 
congenial. He keeps in close touch with his paper, 
the "Savannah Press," which, under his ownership 
and management, has become a power in the public 
affairs of Georgia. 

Mrs. Stovall, like Mrs. Walter H. Page and Mrs. 
Sharp, and perhaps others among the wives of 
American diplomats I have not had the chance of 
meeting, has fitted into the diplomatic environment 
most admirably, and is generally esteemed. 

Bern, August 10, 1917. I got some side-lights 
on Balkan internal affairs to-day. Those who sj^m- 
pathize with Serbia are extremely restless over the 
toleration of Bulgaria by England and America. 
It is a curious thing that, while Serbia and Bulgaria 
are both Slav and have the same religion, they hate 
each other almost more than any other combatants. 
The Serbs think that it is the greatest mistake to 
treat with Bulgaria separately. They say that in 



IN SWITZERLAND 195 

sympathy Bulgaria is as German as Bavaria, that 
she is the Prussia of the Balkans, and that, if there 
should be an inconclusive peace, Bulgaria would 
organize trouble within a few years. 

A particular cause of irritation is the retention of 
the Bulgarian minister at Washington. He was 
a professor in Roberts College at Constantinople 
before the war, and his retention and the main- 
tenance of relations with Bulgaria are referred here 
to the influence of Americans who are interested in 
Roberts College. "It is a great blunder," I am 
told, "to keep the minister there on the theory that 
he is a nice, friendly, college professor. For the 
purpose of injuring America in every possible way 
he is a Bulgarian, and Bulgaria is Germany, and 
Germany is the kaiser." 

I met to-day an old "singe-cat" politician from 
America, who had spent some years in Germany in 
an official position. "If you figure on any dem- 
ocratization in Germany in time to affect the de- 
cision of this war, you will be beautifully left," he 
said. "You 've got to lick Germany, or they '11 lick 
you. There 's no middle ground. This is a fight 
for a crown or several crowns, for all the old power, 
and then some. The kaiser is gambling with other 
people's money, and nothing will stop him short of 
spending it all in this effort to conquer the world. 

"The discussion of liberalization inside Germany 
is predicated on conditions that exist in America, 



196 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

England, and France. But these conditions do 
not exist in Germany. Previous to 1848 the Ger- 
mans were mostly in a state of serfdom. What 
they have enjoyed under kaiserism is so good by 
comparison that they are satisfied. Germany is 
a country that in its relation to its rulers can be 
compared to only two other nations and races. As 
Confucius was to China, as Moses was to Israel, so 
is the Hohenzollern, from Frederick the Great 
downwards, to Germany. 

"The trouble with long-distance opinion," con- 
tinued my friend, "is that it ig-nores the all-impor- 
tant element of background, antecedents, local con- 
ditions. We judge Prussia, we judge Germanj% 
in terms of American individuality and democracy. 
The Germans will stand for another century the 
political tyranny and abuse that our people would 
wake up to and tlu'ow off in a month. So go to 
work fixing the submarines and transporting an 
army; the treaty of peace must be signed some- 
where in the vicinity of Berlin." 

Bern, August 12, 1917. The American Lega- 
tion at Bern is a nodal point. Every day refugees 
are here from some place in the near Orient, making 
their way homeward to America. This morning I 
saw a Jewish woman who was at the head of a party 
of thirty, thirteen women and seventeen children, 
who were en route from Jerusalem. She was 



IN SWITZERLAND 197 

American-born, she said, the wife of an east-side 
rabbi in New York. She went to Jerusalem some 
years ago to be with her parents, who had grown 
old and needed her, but her husband continued to 
support her. Then her parents died. A few 
months ago a party was made up to flee from the 
typhus-cursed and poverty-ridden city and go home 
to America. It had taken five weeks to go from 
Jerusalem to Constantinople. The party had trav- 
eled by train, automobile, horse cart, and on foot, 
making their way as best they could and largely 
by their own wits. They had to wait six weeks in 
Constantinople, and then came here by a circuitous 
route. They were traveling on funds furnished by 
Jewish charitable societies. They will sail from 
Bordeaux for New York. 

I met one of the many refugees from Armenia 
who are passing through. Their stories are too ter- 
rible to accept without some authentication. They 
report the most unthinkable butchery of the Armen- 
ian population by the Turks. The figures they give 
are more than seventy per cent, killed in the whole 
population. The roads are strewn with dead bod- 
ies. On the roadsides the jackals from the moun- 
tains, grown tame by usage, are constantly busy 
with the human carrion. Half-crazed, starving 
women wander on the highways without a shred of 
clothing. The stories of maltreatment of women, 
including refined girls at Christian colleges main- 



198 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

tained by Americans, are really too awful to be- 
lieve. They make German behavior in Belgium 
seem restrained by contrast. 

Still another visitor at the legation had come re- 
cently from Warsaw. He brought reports of ap- 
palling conditions. All prices were so high as to 
be beyond the reach of the poor. It was impossible 
to buy clothes at all. The bread ration was less than 
half the bread ration in Germany. A civilian could 
buy two eggs a month. There was tremendous 
mortality among babies. Owing to the low vitality 
of the population, typhus was killing off the people 
in great numbers. The native population had 
grown so desperate that they got the upper hand 
of the Landstiirm soldiers, who had been put over 
them and who themselves were but poorly fed, a 
begging soldier being a not infrequent sight. The 
natives were so rebellious that the German soldiers 
did n't have the courage to stand up to them and 
often suffered ill-usage at their hands. 

August 13, 1917. I fell in with some Russians 
to-day, and was much interested in their discussion 
of the situation in their country. They are not op- 
timistic. They think it will be many a year before 
Russia is ready for a democratic government. At 
present the best results for war could be got out 
of the right kind of czar. Nicholas was the wi'ong 
kind. If you lack intelligence and enlightened pa- 



IN SWITZERLAND 199 

triotism, then power is the only thing that can hold 
together many countries in one country. The czar 
had no love of power. If he had the chance now 
to be emperor he would n't take any great amount 
of trouble to get back. If he were very good or 
very bad, if he loved power, if he had any sense of 
worldly realities, he might have saved Russia. He 
doubtless abdicated, believing that it was best for 
his country, but Russians of the type I am quoting 
think that he had no right to abdicate, and that 
by his act he forfeited all claim on the loyalty of 
his subjects. He had taken the vow to reign; he 
broke it. The czar represented in his own personal 
character the vice of mental shiftlessness, which is 
general in the Russian bureaucracy. It is related 
that when the Russian foreign minister received 
the ultimatum from Tokio that resulted in the 
Russo-Japanese war, it was a Friday night. He 
threw up his hands in despair and said, "It will 
not be possible to see his Majesty until next Tues- 
day, and that will be too late!" Not that his 
Majesty was attending to anything of importance, 
but his time was disposed of by some sort of rou- 
tine, and the minister knew that on no pretext 
could the routine be interrupted. When finally 
the czar could be seen he rejected the idea of war 
being possible. It was many days before he 
could be persuaded that the Japanese war was a 
fact. 



200 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Once the governor of one of the Russian prov- 
inces became entangled with the Petrograd author- 
ities on a matter of overwhelming importance. He 
could n't get it settled in treaty with the minister 
of the department; so he undertook a long trip to 
the capital for an audience with the czar. The sov- 
ereign received him most pleasantly, knowing the 
object of his mission. But he didn't permit him 
to talk on the all-important subject. He knew that 
it would be necessary to send for ministers and en- 
tertain perplexing considerations. So he began an 
animated conversation on other matters. How was 
his Excellency's wife? Was she interested in Red 
Cross work? (The Red Cross was one of the czar's 
hobbies). She was president of the local society. 
Ah, the empress would be interested! So he sent 
for her Majesty, and there was a great to-do about 
the Red Cross work in the governor's district. 
When the time came for bringing the interview to 
an end, not one word had been permitted on the 
governor's real errand, and he went home with his 
trouble on his back. 

"How about Kerensky?" 

When I put that question it was like throwing 
a ball of yarn among a litter of kittens. Finally, 
one of the Russians got the floor as against the 
others; to make sure of keeping it, he stood up 
and, making motions all the while with his hands 



IN SWITZERLAND 201 

like a Swiss bell-ringer, gave his analysis of the 
Russian situation in such a torrent of words that it 
was difficult to follow him. 

He rated Kerensk}^ as a shrewd politician, but 
lacking touch of genius. He said Kerensky had 
himself proposed in the Duma, two years ago, the 
precise separate peace with Germany that was now 
so much reprobated. Kerensky was so fettered by 
party ties, which he neither wished, nor knew how, 
to throw off, that he would find it impossible to con- 
trol the Russian situation. While he was playing 
the party game, that situation would get away from 
him. Kerensky had encouraged the democratic 
methods in the army that now made discipline im- 
possible. He could easily sow the seeds of insub- 
ordination, but he could n't put things back where 
they were by threatening to shoot disobedient sol- 
diers. 

Brusiloff was put out on account of his popularity 
and strength. They were afraid he might be made 
military dictator. Nobody in Petrograd wants effi- 
ciency against Germany enough to take any chance 
of a military dictatorship. Korniloff would prob- 
ably not be Brusiloff's successor on the terms he 
had laid down, because the power he demanded 
would make him dictator. It is exactly a dictator- 
ship that Russia needs ; it would be the road to quick 
and sure Allied victory. 

The big mistake of the revolution was lack of a 



202 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

pre]3ared plan. You can't throw an enormous 
country like Russia on its resources over night. 
The people had been more or less prepared on the 
subject of social revolution, but of political they 
knew nothing. As soon as political revolution 
leveled down whatever powers had been standing, 
the social revolutionists took possession with their 
big following and semi-matured ideas. The only 
hope of Russia's coming back and presenting a solid 
front on the side of the Allies is in a military dic- 
tatorship. 

That was the last word. 

August 12, 1917. I met a real democrat from 
Germany to-day. He had n't been there very 
recently; perhaps his "room is better than his com- 
pany" in the kaiser's bailiwick. But he is very in- 
telligent and has a large acquaintance in Germany 
with whom he is in constant correspondence. He 
is a zealous worker for the adoption of democratic 
ideas on American lines. I inferred that while his 
mind had been tending in that direction for some 
time, his actual conversion had been brought about 
by President Wilson's state papers. 

The late cabinet crisis contained no comfort for 
this democrat. It was true that there had been 
some growth of liberal thought in Germany since 
the war, but it was not strong enough to defy or 
even to disregard the kaiser, representing, as he did, 



IN SWITZERLAND 203 

the tradition and fact of royal power and the mil- 
itary system. 

The people are stirring more or less for dem- 
ocratization. Their thought gives the impulse to 
the Reichstag. But public opinion as a force is 
not yet rooted. The initiative comes from the peo- 
ple, but the militarists override it. A half -formed 
public opinion proposes; a highly organized, thor- 
oughly intrenched kaiserism disposes. That was 
the formula for the recent action of the Reichstag 
and the sequel. 

The kaiser is a neurasthenic. He changes from 
week to week. At times he is something of a dem- 
ocrat himself. He is worked upon by war con- 
ditions and by personal influence. Russia's break- 
down has withered his budding faith in democrac}^ 
and di'iven him back to the old real thing. 

"The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be. 
The devil was well, the devil a monk was he." 

The people of Germany are strong when they 
serve the kaiser, but grow weak against him. They 
are yoke-oxen. The very discipline that cements 
them prevents the development of initiative and de- 
pendence. But the present informant sees better 
things in the future. Even the Germans can't 
stand everything. They will be aroused against 
the tyranny over them either in case of military de- 



204 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

feat or in the continuance of, or further decline in, 
economic and food conditions. 

This man thought that Sweden and Bessarabia 
would be decisive as to food supplies. The Pres- 
ident should carry out the most drastic measures in 
respect to Sweden. From that country such quan- 
tities of material for munitions and food supplies 
have come into Germany that people have wondered 
how Sweden had gathered it and transported it. 
It was thought possible that the German Navy had 
helped in the transport from Sweden. 

Germany was now making a drive on the eastern 
front for Bessarabia. The present crop of grain 
in that ricli agricultural countrj'^ would help enor- 
mously, but even if it were necessary to wait until 
next harvest, the possession of Bessarabia would 
encourage Germany. The people are quick to take 
heart, and hope goes ahiiost as far as actual food. 

My informant thought that Germany could hold 
together until late winter, but if by that time 
Sweden and Bessarabia should be out of hand, it 
would be difficult to control the people longer, and 
revolt in some tangible form would follow. 

The lack of information in Germany and the blind 
acceptance of authority by an intelligent community 
was attributed in part to press control. The repre- 
sentatives of the military, naval, and civil power sit 
together in daily conference and adopt policies for 
the press. Even a great journal like the "Frank- 



IN SWITZERLAND 205 

furter Zeitung" is obliged to submit to this brutal 
dictation. 

The press, on orders, prints next to nothing about 
America. That situation receives the silent treat- 
ment. The people would be influenced by America, 
owing to the bonds of kinship between the two coun- 
tries, but they get nothing but a few half-truths. 

A sample of the kind of misleading news that is 
put out and accepted by German people is the fic- 
tion that America is in a state of mental servitude to 
England. They firmly beheve that America was 
captured by an extensive scheme of English propa- 
ganda antedating the war. The publication of ex- 
tracts from Bernhardi's book by several American 
newspapers early in 1914 is cited as conclusive proof 
of the English propaganda. 

The tenacity with which Germans hold to the 
utterly absurd belief in the mental subjection of 
America by perfidious Albion recalls a not dissimilar 
obsession in England that Count von Bernstorff 
had America in hand at one stage of the game. Of 
course poor Bernstorff never had a particle of real 
pull anywhere in America at any time. He did n't 
even always receive his "cash on delivery" purchases. 
It was German propagandism, a thing discarded 
off-hand by the rebelliously free mind of America, 
that impaired Germany's standing at the bar of 
American opinion from the very fu'st. Her case 
was really never considered on its merits, for it had 



206 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

none after Belgium and the Lusitania. American 
perception was quick to grasp this. 

My informant brought a report that will be es- 
pecially interesting in America. It was to the 
effect that Count von Bernstorff was giving real ad- 
vice and information in regard to America, and that 
he was himself showing distinct leanings toward 
democracy. Stranger things have happened than 
Bernstorff holding a seat in a German Liberal min- 
istry. He knows America, if they will but en- 
courage him to bring his knowledge to bear in the 
councils in Berlin. 

The trouble is that the kaiser, like most of the 
breed of autocrats and tyrants, listens only to those 
who tell him what he wishes to hear. No minister 
can get along with him without sacrificing his own 
principles and convictions. Hindenburg and Lu- 
dendorff are not so subservient, but they are war 
chiefs and cannot be replaced. These two are said 
to give the kaiser when he is at the front an hour a 
day, and no more, for advice and consultation. 
That hour finished, the two generals leave on the 
dot, declining always, on the score of military duty, 
to accept royal hospitality, which would tend fur- 
ther to open military matters to what they regard 
as lay discussion. 

The opinion was expressed that if anything 
should happen to the kaiser, the crown prince would 
never be allowed to take his place as absolute mon- 



IN SAVITZERLAND 207 

arch. There is enough "kick" in German hberalism 
for that. Moreover, the kaiser's policy, ending in 
this great war, has fully capitalized for himself all 
the loyalty to dynasty that there is in Germany, 
every drop of it. 

The liberalism that must lie at the bottom of the 
working German's unwillingness to delegate to a 
single person future power to plunge him into war 
ruin, the liberalism of kinship and sympathy with 
the world, the liberalism of right thinking and right 
feeling of which even war brutality has not ex- 
tirpated the roots, the liberalism of love of family, 
pleasant routine, music, friendly conversation, and 
quiet things — this is the liberalism that my in- 
formant hopes for in Germany, whether now or 
later, whenever final doom shall be pronounced upon 
the tyrann}^ that now stalks over the land. 

"He that leadeth into captivity shall go into cap- 
tivity : he that killeth with the sword must be killed 
with the sword." 

Bern. This is the city of the bear. Bruin is 
everj^where, on the monuments and gate-posts, in 
coats of arms and trademarks, and most real of all, 
in the bear den maintained from time immemorial 
by the municipality of Bern. 

Napoleon took the Bern bears to Paris. When 
peace came, the Bernese clamored loud to have 
their bears returned, and the treaty so provided. 
These bears of the Bern bear-pit are a royal family, 



208 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

and can trace their ancestry back for centuries. 

It is a sort of relief to turn in these war times 
to a less ci-uel wild animal than man, and fall down 
in bear worship. Really, there is something kind 
in bruin's face as he opens his mouth in what might 
pass for a smile, taking short breaths, with his red 
tongue hanging over his lower lip. At least there 
is no such expression as might be on the face of an 
aforetime gentle youth as he plunges his bayonet 
into the breast of an equally gentle youth differently 
uniformed. 

I paid a visit to the bears' den, going down to 
the river level and walking from the upper to the 
middle bridge amid old architecture that appealed 
as no new architecture does or can. Why is it that 
just across the river, in the new and fashionable 
quarter where the legations are located, there should 
be such hideously suburban architecture and land- 
scaping, when the most beautiful models in the 
world utter a wordless, but righteous, protest a few 
hundred yards away? 

When I spoke of my visit to the bear-pit this 
afternoon, a lady recited the story that has become 
a tradition in Bern, but is historically accurate. 
She told it well, and it was much more stirring than 
the story of the horrible butchery by which thou- 
sands had lost their lives in Flanders only the day 
before. So cruelly does usage blunt the human 
feelings ! 



IN SWITZERLAND 209 

On a night many years ago one of the secretaries 
of the British legation, with a colleague from 
another legation, stopped at the bear's den. It was 
about midnight. They had been out to dinner and 
were much under the influence of wine. The 
Englishman in a sporting spirit vaulted over the 
iron rail at the top and then back several times. 
The last time he was tripped by his cane, which 
he held in his hand, and fell twenty feet to the 
bottom of the pit. He was not hurt by the fall, 
and the pit was empty, for the bears had gone into 
their sleeping cellars. 

Neither diplomat was much alarmed after it was 
found that the Englishman was n't injured by his 
fall. He was sobered, and cautioned the other not 
to make too much noise while he explored the place 
to see whether he could climb out. Some time was 
spent in this hunt, which was without result; but 
there was still no sign from the sleeping bears. 

The colleague then went off to find a rope or a 
ladder. At the end of half an hour he came back 
empty-handed, but with three or four other men, 
and ways and means were discussed, without any 
decision being reached. The Englishman, mean- 
time, was sober as a judge, but his colleague was 
intoxicated and excited. It was now after one 
o'clock and the bears were apparently still asleep. 
The men went off on another hunt for ropes and 
ladders. They were gone a long time, knocking at 



210 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

doors and searching fruitlessly. The leader was 
now in a panic, and his own mental paralysis seemed 
to spread to all whom he met. He finally returned, 
bringing with him a crowd of helpless people, in- 
cluding a policeman. 

Despite warnings from the Englishman, the 
crowd made a great noise, which waked up the bears, 
and they began to appear from their sleeping-quar- 
ters. They gathered around the Englishman with 
curiosity, but at first without evil design, smelling 
at him and yawning. The crowd kept on shouting, 
one suggesting one thing and another something 
else. There was running and cursing, but there 
was no Jim Bludsoe to yell out what should be 
done. 

By thi*ee o'clock the bears grew more and more 
restless, and their behavior less and less friendly. 
Some one suggested that a coat be torn into strips, 
tied together, and used as a rope. It was done. 
The Englishman was pulled half-way up ; the rope 
broke, and he fell back. 

The bears now began to show signs of ugly tem- 
per. They were walking rapidly to and fro, ap- 
proaching the Englishman, putting a paw on his 
shoulder, smelling at him longer at a time. It was 
suggested that the policeman use his pistol. He re- 
plied that it was useless, as the bears would not 
attack a man. 

Meanwhile another rope of coat strips was made. 



IN SWITZERLAND 211 

The Englishman grasped it, and the crowd began 
puUing him up. When his feet were a few inches 
from the bottom, one of the bears staggered up to 
him, and struck him with his paw in the small of 
the back. The rope parted, and he fell, his spine 
crushed by the blow. The bears fell on him and 
literally devoured the dead body. Then the police- 
man shot the bear that struck the deadly blow. 

I saw the swaying shoulders and the paunch's swag and swing, 
And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous plead- 
ing thing. 

Nearer and nearer he staggered with paws like hands that 

pray, 
From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away. 

A model city is this city of the bears, the capital 
of the mother republic, a republic founded two hun- 
dred years before Columbus discovered America. 
A lady in one of the legations raised her hands in 
despair at the stupidity of the Swiss. You go into 
a shop, she declared, and ask for something. A 
man ambles off, comes back empty-handed, stares 
stupidly into your eyes, goes away, misunderstands 
again. What is it that gives such a wonderful 
product from a people individually dull, if dull they 
are? I turned from the lady to the young son of 
Minister Stovall and asked him the question. 

"I don't admit that they are dull," he said, as a 



212 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

diplomat's son should. "What they do is well done 
because their tasks are limited and definite, and they 
have only to understand to be faithful." 

I could see for myself that there was discipline. 
There are no unruly children running about From 
my window, which also commands a view of the 
Jungfrau and the Oberland, I can see thi-ee or four 
playgrounds on the banks of the Aar. In the af- 
ternoons these spaces are always ahve with young- 
sters. Their play is well ordered. They run, 
jump, throw the discus, pole-vault, and swim and 
dive in the river. It is real play, but it is orderly. 
All are in good earnest about it. The play does n't 
degenerate into horse-play. 

In our America it would be almost impossible 
to maintain these playgrounds except under the se- 
verest supervision. They would be picked to 
pieces, strewn with litter, and the earnest work of 
athletics turned into some sort of buffoonery. 
Here the play goes on, apparently without super- 
intendence, right up to dark. 

The arrangement of this little city, the squares 
and public buildings, the municipal housekeeping, 
are a model of painstaking and good taste. The 
wonderful river combines utility and beauty. It 
twists and turns in its com*se through the town, 
making landscaping opportunities that have been 
taken advantage of. After it reaches the outside 
of the city it pursues its swift course a mile, then 



IN SWITZERLAND 213 

bends sharply, and comes back to within three hun- 
dred yards. The thrifty Bernese have made a 
tmmel from bend to bend with forty feet of fall, 
and here the city gets its supply of electric power. 

The water for drinking comes from the moun- 
tains, and, though analysis shows chemical purity, 
it is under suspicion of bringing the disease of 
goitre, which is almost a curse in Switzerland. 

I wish that there might be systematized study of 
Swiss cities by Americans, and that we might apply 
some of their good ways. Eveiy thing moves 
quietly. There is no hurry, but there is no tar- 
diness. It is the rarest thing for a street-car to be 
behind time. And, by the way, there is one obvious 
suggestion from their street-car methods. We have 
too many stops. Every other corner would be quite 
enough. 

August 17, 1917. It is believed in many quarters 
in Switzerland that Herr Erzberger, through whose 
initiative the four-party coalition was formed in the 
Reichstag for the passage of the peace resolution 
that brought on the political crisis of July has car- 
ried, perhaps in unison with Austria, his irrepres- 
sible activities to the Vatican, and has brought forth 
the new proposal for which the pope is sponsor. 

It is the Center, or Catholic, Party in Germany, 
controlling ninety-one votes in the Reichstag, which 
has lately constituted itself, under Erzberger's 



214 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

leadership, the special spokesman of peace yearn- 
ings. Erzberger engineered the coalition of Cen- 
trists, Socialists, Progressives, and National Lib- 
erals that upset the Betliniann-Hollweg Govern- 
ment, and despite the fact that his movement struck 
the rock of military opposition, he has continued to 
proclaim his purpose to work for peace in every pos- 
sible direction. 

For weeks the movement with which Erzberger's 
name was identified has been discussed in a specu- 
lative manner in Switzerland, with divergent 
opinion as to whether it sprang from sincere motives 
or was part of the German game. It is only pos- 
sible to average opinion as to inside conditions in 
Germany. ,There is an irreconcilable conflict of 
testimony, and every statement contains a mixture 
of a certain proportion of truth, which inevitably 
filters through with the propaganda spread by 
German agents, the counter-propaganda by allied 
agents, and exaggeration by repetition. 

Underneath every proposal for peace, however 
impossible from the Allies' point of view, there is 
always the popular wistfulness to see the war ended. 

This desire grows stronger with adversity and 
weaker with success, but when you get to details, 
the Germans shrink from conditions such as in- 
demnity, which they regard as a plea of guilty to 
the felony of starting a wicked and murderous war. 

In the general sentiment for peace the civilian 



IN SWITZERLAND 215 

element has been reinforced by the discontent and 
the progress of the democratization idea in the 
army. Soldiers obey their officers and still fight 
well, but men who go home after peace will never 
consent to live under an autocracy that can 
capriciously involve their country in war. 

Of this sentiment in the army the generals and 
the kaiser are well aware, and like the civilian un- 
rest, it gives them constant solicitude. Even in 
Switzerland one meets few persons who claim that 
the autocracy will last beyond the present kaiser. 

Out of these conditions the demand for peace 
arises in varying forms and degrees of intensity. 
The Catholics who under Erzberger's leadership 
organized the Juty revolt would naturally give their 
support to the latest peace initiative from the 
Vatican. 

In Germany the government policy exactly re- 
verses that of England. The German theory is 
that the Government can prevent the weakness and 
panic that the sudden suggestion of peace might 
produce by keeping that topic constantly under dis- 
cussion. This is the pet policy of the Catholic 
party the leader of which, Erzberger, advertises 
that he is always ready to meet any advocate of 
peace from any belligerent Government, in Swit- 
zerland any day, and collaborate for peace on terms 
fair to both sides. 

The British and American governments take the 



216 FLASHES FROM THE FKONT 

contrary stand, and advocates of peace are re- 
garded as playing Germany's game. This indi- 
cates that despite the claims for German discipline, 
that country is less able to hold its people to war 
sacrifice than are the Allies, but it also indicates 
that the Allied peoples are taught to regard the 
initiation of peace discussion as an unmistakable 
weakening, whereas the Germans can shout peace 
on every street corner without suffering a loss of 
morale themselves or encouraging their enemies. 

After spending ten days in Switzerland and talk- 
ing with all kinds of people, I believe that it is vain 
to hope for a popular upheaval in Germany before 
the war ends. Germany is held in the vice of dis- 
cipline. Fear is the chief element in its loyalty; 
but while the people stand in awe of the autocracy, 
the autocrac}'^ also fears the people. It may not be 
possible, owing to long-established mental disci- 
pline, for the people to develop and enforce an en- 
lightened and matured public opinion, but waves 
of emotion are continually sweeping over Germany, 
and sharply react on the Reichstag and the powers 
behind the throne. 

Hindenburg and Ludendorff, to whom are now 
delegated the powers of the autocracy, though in 
what proportion as between the two is not precisely 
known, came together from the front and assumed 
personal, direct control of the situation during the 
political crisis in July, Their authority was 



IN SWITZERLAND 217 

recognized on all hands. Even the four-party 
coalition, which in the Reichstag had a majority for 
the peace resolution of more than a hundred, a body 
that derives considerable power from its control of 
money credits, modified its plans in conformity with 
the dictation of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. It 
was they who chose Michaelis and indicated the 
program he should outline, and it is they who will 
decide what program he shall actually carry out 
when the Reichstag reassembles. 

In the tripartite distribution of power, by far the 
greater part resides in the autocracy, of which the 
kaiser is temporarily the figurehead. On the op- 
posite side are the people, with the Reichstag in the 
middle furnishing a connecting-link. 

The July crisis was produced by popular unrest, 
of which the chief immediate cause is said to have 
been the landing of American troops in France 
when the food scarcity was at its worst. This 
thoroughly alarmed the military party. The popu- 
lar demand for peace and political reform came to 
the Reichstag with an impact that momentarily 
transferred the balance of control by which that 
body is normally held. The adoption of the peace 
resolution was the result. 

The strong-handed intervention of Hindenburg 
and Ludendorff was favored by events in Russia 
during subsequent weeks, and also by using through 
the press submarine statistics, which had apparently 



218 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

been held in reserve until the disappointment due 
to the failure of the Government's promises when 
submarine frightfulness started last February had 
subsided. The German press pointed out that 
while England had not yet been reduced, as 
promised, by the U-boat campaign, the destruction 
of tonnage would yet accomplish that result and, 
what was even more certain, would render impos- 
sible the transport and supply of American 
soldiers in sufficient measure to affect the result 
of the war. 

As the news from Russia has become less favor- 
able for Germany, the press and propaganda have 
emphasized submarine warfare as the offensive 
against which the Allies are helpless, the silent and 
invisible blows of which are winning the war for 
Germany. 

August 31, 1917. A reading of Mr. Hoover's 
clear and forcible appeal to the public, printed in 
"The Times" of August 11, 1917, moves me to call 
the attention of America to the example of Switzer- 
land. In that country, more even than in France 
or England, there exists a plan carefully worked 
out by the authorities, and scrupulously put into 
effect by the people, for the conservation of food. 
There are so many things in the world to shake 
democratic faith that it is comforting to see the pos- 
sibilities of reverence, order, and obedience to 



IN SWITZERLAND 219 

authority under a republic so fully demonstrated 
as in the mother republic of Switzerland. 

It is possible that what has been needed in 
America was an emergency under such leadership 
as Mr. Hoover's, and that our hitherto self-in- 
dulgent public will come out of their experience 
with disciplined hearts. 

The regulations in Switzerland are not extreme, 
but they are thorough and are rigidly enforced, or, 
to put it more justly, are lived up to. The people 
have confidence in the wisdom of the plan and the 
impartiality of its administration, and they there- 
fore make enforcement unnecessary by general, 
voluntary compliance. 

People in France will in many cases beat the law 
by laying in big stocks on the market-day preceding 
the meatless days. This in Paris is not considered 
reprehensible, but in Switzerland it would be most 
severely reprobated by public sentiment, to say 
nothing of the legal consequences. For example, 
in Bern even the household of the American minis- 
ter is on rations. On the first of each month Mrs. 
Stovall receives a card to fill in, stating the probable 
needs for that month. She sets down the quanti- 
ties of the meats and vegetables that count, and 
sends the card back. The authorities then return 
the estimated allowance as approved by them. 

This is not accounted a hardship by any one. 
On the contrary, there is general agreement that the 



220 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

method is necessary, orderly, fair, and in the public 
interest. 

There are not only laws against profiteering, but 
public opinion is so alert on this subject that no 
market vender would dare attempt extortion. In 
the few cases where it has been attempted indignant 
women marketers have upset stalls and scattered 
their contents in the street. 

The attitude of the people toward food and 
marketing interested me greatly. Marketing is a 
kind of sacred rite. Food is handled with caressing 
and cherishing care. In the morning hours the 
street-cars are virtually given over to the market- 
ers, who carry their prizes in neat, small baskets 
and string bags. 

It is astonishing how quickly a new-comer falls 
into the prevalent idea. I found myself soon tak- 
ing the Swiss view of the preciousness of food. 
And what a wonderful flavor is imparted by a little 
stint! Like many other Americans, I like my 
breakfast best, and make it the chief meal. A 
favorite breakfast consist of fruit, bacon, coffee, 
bread, and plenty of butter and sugar. In Swit- 
zerland oranges are plentiful from Italy, so one is 
not limited there, though the price is high. But of 
bacon I could have only three very small bits; of 
butter, three slivers, equal to about one ordinary 
piece ; and of sugar, one piece broken in the middle 



IN SWITZERLAND 221 

to look like two. The bread allowance was equal 
to about two rolls. This is enough breakfast for 
anybody, and it was all anybody could get. And it 
was simply delicious. 



CHAPTER XIII 

A CORNER OF ALSACE RECONQUERED 

July, 1917. The minister of war had elected that 
we should see a portion of that Alsace which French 
arms had reconquered. I was the first American, 
as it happened, to appear in Alsace since our 
country had come into the war. I was a little em- 
barrassed to find that word of the visit had pre- 
ceded me and that it was to be taken somewhat 
seriously as a mile-stone. I soon saw, however, 
that nobody could be embarrassed long, but only 
pleased and delighted by the gay and charming 
hospitality of Alsace. 

Our route lay over the famous Vosges Moun- 
tains. Shortly after we had passed the crest, 
which here is only about eleven hundred feet 
above sea-level, our officer announced that we were 
now in Alsace, and there opened before us the lovely 
valley of the Doller. In a few minutes we were in 
the village of Sewen (pronounced Sayven), which 
is garrisoned largely by Senegalese. They greatly 
interest a Southerner raised among and by darkies. 
It never loses its strangeness to me that these 
Africans are unable to talk or understand Ameri- 
can. 

222 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 223 

A big buck was cooking supper out on the road- 
side, and we watched him with an interest that was 
augmented by our guide's conversation with him in 
a patois understood by both. He was making a 
kind of burgoo of rice and horse-meat in an im- 
mense vessel about the size of a stereotype metal 
pot, from which issued a most appetizing smell. 
His tribesmen eschew pork, but when taxed with 
slipping some quantities of hog-meat surreptitiously 
into the stew, old Mose, as he might have been 
called on form, grinningly admitted the charge. 
His nose spread almost across his face, which was 
pock-marked; humor laughed in his eyes and ex- 
panded his lips. He was one of those negroes 
whom an experienced Southerner would at once 
pronounce as having "a heap of sense." 

When I showed interest in the black men, several 
of them were called up, and we tried to induce them 
to carry on conversation in their native tongue, with 
only indifferent success, owing to their timidity. 
Their faces are scarred in infancy by lines indicat- 
ing tribal affiliation. They carry a kind of cutlass 
that might have been old-fashioned three years ago, 
but wliich has become most useful in trench war- 
fare. 

We went up the Doller a mile or two to see a 
dam built by the Germans in 1884-87 and which 
supplies water-power to a portion of the valley. 
We had an entrancing view from this dam, one of 



224 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

many permitted us dm-ing om* visit. It was diffi- 
cult to realize amid such peaceful scenes that a hor- 
rible war was going on within a few miles. In the 
valley of the Doller as elsewhere in that part of 
Alsace now in French hands the crops, particu- 
larly potatoes and hay, are unusually fine, and the 
impression from any vantage-point is one of 
prosperity and plenty. 

In the late afternoon we drove down the valley 
in the direction of the Rhine to Massevaux, where 
we were to put up. It is a beautiful town, with a 
population of several thousand. It has enjoyed 
prosperity from cotton and leather manufacture, 
and so far the Boche has spared it, contenting him- 
self with an almost daily air-plane visit, perhaps 
by way of warning. The church has an organ 
which the inhabitants compare favorably with the 
famous one in the Strasburg Cathedral. They had 
arranged a recital in our honor in order to show 
its quality, but the time proved too short. 

We drove to headquarters, over which floated 
the Stars and Stripes along with the French flag, 
to pay our respects to the conmiandant, and found 
that he was to give us a dinner in the evening. In 
the meantime we were conducted not to the 
excellent hotel, but to private houses. My friend 
went off to a house near the main street, while a 
captain took me to a fine old mansion in the square 
and introduced me to my hostess. 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 225 

When I met my colleague later I said, "No 
matter how charmingly you are located, I am more 
so." But he stood up stoutly for his own host. 
My hostess was the youngest of four sisters left re- 
maining of a prominent Alsatian family. The 
parents had died since the war; the only son was 
killed in Champagne. The three elder sisters were 
conducting a hospital in Belfort. My hostess kept 
her house open for French officers and soldiers. 
At one time thirty or forty were accommodated 
there, but the number was now reduced to six or 
eight. 

From my hostess I heard the strongest plea for 
restoring Alsace and Lorraine that I had ever heard 
anywhere. She had only a small vocabulary of 
broken English, but she used it with a convincing 
eloquence. It was as if I embodied the whole 
United States, which had come to rescue Alsace if 
it could be shown that Alsace needed, desired, and 
deserved rescue. She made me feel that German 
rule had been intolerable, and would be far more 
intolerable if the Germans were victorious. The 
losses were terrible; her own house had been left 
headless, but better total extinction than the ac- 
ceptance of Hun tyranny. This beautiful young 
girl made me feel as I had never felt before the 
reality of an alien oppression. "I feel as if the 
hoof of an unclean beast is on my neck, and I must 
throw it off if I die." 



226 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

I cannot exaggerate the trust in America which 
I found in this house, both in her will to put an end 
to German brutalism and her power to do it. 

The dinner tendered by the commandant was at- 
tended by a dozen officers, and was a happy occa- 
sion. American flags entwined with the Tricolor 
were much in evidence, and the commandant made 
an eloquent speech in English. Afterward we all 
walked out together under the stars, and we said 
good night with assurances of sincere good-will all 
around. 

We turned out early the following morning for 
the greatest experience possible in Alsace, — and for 
the matter of that, anywhere, — a visit to the battle- 
line on the very top of a mountain. 

The route from Massevaux to Hartmannsweiler- 
kopf takes one over the Roseberg, through Thann 
and Bitschwiller. At the latter village we were 
joined by the local commandant, a captain born in 
Mulhouse, or Miihlhausen, and changing to a 
higher-powered car, we began the steep ascent. In 
an hour we had reached the end of the automobile 
road. We had stopped at an ambulance station 
on the way up, inspected the hospital, which was 
hewn out in the side of the hill, and provided our- 
selves with steel helmets and gas-masks. 

It was a fine morning, affording exquisitely 
beautiful views, and Fritz was taking full advan- 
tage of it to pay his respects to Hartmanns with 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 227 

his 77's. AVhen we started on the pedestrian part 
of the journey an airplane was buzzing in the blue 
sky above to give location and range to the German 
gunners three or four miles away. 

We walked right into the zone of fire, on our 
way picking up bits of shell that had fallen in the 
road a few minutes before. Our ofiicers shook their 
heads over the prospect of our going to the top, 
and at the first post the officer in charge pronounced 
against the attempt. The avion would certainly 
see us, and the German gunners would shoot 
directly at us. We took refuge in a dugout, where 
we listened in security to the bursting shells of the 
Germans, alternating with the rattle of the French 
fire on the airplane. 

Our hospitable officers meanwhile brought 
champagne for our refreshment. The opinion was 
that the 77's would keep busy until lunch-time, but 
that Fritz would surely hold his midday feast 
sacred, and we might then proceed to Hartmanns, 
which lay twenty minutes' climb farther up. 
Actually, the firing ceased about eleven, and the 
hostile airmen having disappeared, we made our 
way up a mule-path to the communicating trenches. 
This path is not used in daytime as a rule, and every 
night the Germans shoot at it from their trenches 
on the other side of the valley. 

When we entered the trench my guide ordered 
a stop in order to give me a drill in putting on the 



228 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

gas-mask, which, he assured me, might prove very 
useful. I was taught first to throw down my cane, 
then my hehnet, with the greatest possible speed, 
and, thus disencumbered, to take the gas mask out 
of the bag in which it was carried on a strap over the 
shoulder and put it on, chin first. 

It was a long walk for a tenderfoot up Hart- 
manns, and my captain spent half his time waiting 
for me. When we reached a point within a hundred 
yards of the top the trenches became a series of 
chambers hewn in the living rock. We crawled into 
one of these and looked through a loophole at the 
German trenches opposite. They v/ere twenty 
meters, or about seventy-five feet, away, or about 
the distance across Broadway. The hole through 
which we looked was just about big enough for a 
pair of eyes and the muzzle of a machine-gun, 
which was always trained on the trench opposite. 
We could see the trench quite clearly, but not any 
signs of life. 

The Germans were there, just as we were here. 
If they had shown an eyelash, we would have 
popped at it, and we were restricted to very brief 
peeps lest Fritz should become interested in us. 

All this top part of Hartmamis has been denuded 
of its tree life and presents a desolate, bald-headed 
aspect. It is almost like fighting on the Cheops 
pyramid. At the very top a row of five blasted 
pines within a few feet of one another measures the 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 229 

distance between the Germans below and the 
French above. The problem of getting up food 
and supplies is a difficult one for the French, who 
have a fine new military road nearly all the way 
from the valley. How the Germans manage I 
don't know. On the French road hundreds of 
pack-mules toiled up as we came along. Three 
years warfare on top of Hartmanns constitutes one 
of the tragic romances of the war. 

We visited another chamber, affording a different 
view; then we went back into the open trench and 
made our way to within a few yards of the very 
top. We found a place protected from the Ger- 
mans from which we could see the trenches at the 
crest at what seemed a few arms'-length. This 
view brought home to us even more vividly this 
extraordinary mountain warfare, carried on grimly 
in the face of nature's difficulties for possession of a 
toe-hold in Alsace. If the hardships were great 
now, imagine what they must be in the rigorous 
winters peculiar to the Vosges ! 

We went down a different way, stopping now 
and again to get the views. I was struck by the 
great supply of living water at the very top and 
all the w^ay down. On the roadside here and there 
are baths made of rubble masonry for the soldiers. 

We soon got back to the automobile road, and 
having driven to the ambulance headquarters, we 
got out for a walk to the observation-point that af- 



230 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

fords the widest and best view of the Thur Valley. 
It is near the top of a lower peak than Hartmanns- 
weilerkopf. It is one of the most valuable of the 
tops controlled by the French and, with others, 
enables them to dispense almost entirely in this 
region with airplanes for observation purposes. 
It commands the German trenches for miles, and 
from it one sees several great potash factories (they 
are shut down at present lest the French be tempted 
to destroy them from the heights) and seven or 
eight towns in the valley. Although the two lines 
of trenches were visible, the valley lay calm and 
peaceful in the summer sunshine. 

When we walked back to the ambulance head- 
quarters I had a chat with a clean-cut young Ameri- 
can named Colie from Orange, New Jersey. He 
had been here several months driving an ambulance, 
and like most of his kind had things sized up pretty 
well. You never meet one of these young Ameri- 
cans without a fresh access of confidence in all their 
breed. The}'^ will deliver the goods. 

We slid down the hill past Bitschweiler and on to 
our lunch at Thann. The excellent White Bear 
Inn is under the management of M. Ortheb, an 
Alsatian American. I asked: 

"Do you know Chicago?" 

"I have been there." 

"Hoboken?" 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 231 

"Yes; and Jersey City. New York still better, 
but New Orleans best of all." 

*'Do you know the St. Charles Hotel?" 

"When it was built I opened it." 

So small is the world I 

After luncheon we were taken to Alt Thann to 
see what the Germans had done to the church. It 
was a pitiful ruin, even the head of the Saviour on 
the cross, inside the nave, having been shot away. 

Indeed, the lovely town of Thann has been half 
ruined, almost a worse state than total ruin, by the 
Boclie. The only parallel that I can recall is the 
town of Port Tobacco in Charles County, Mary- 
land. It lived by being the county seat. When 
the latter was moved to a rival town, La Plata, 
Port Tobacco dried up like a locust-shell, and is to- 
day one of the saddest spectacles I know. When 
a roof in Thann is destroyed, no one mends it. 
What is the use? The Germans are within a mile 
of Thann and can ruin it at will. Now and again 
they send over a few score shells. They call them 
"forget-me-nots." 

There is a cathedral at Thann. A saying in 
Alsace runs that the Cathedral of Strasburg is the 
highest, that at Metz the largest, that at Thann the 
nicest. The Thann Cathedral has some precious 
stained-glass, which fortunately has been taken 
away for safety. The buildings have been blasted 



232 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

on all sides of the square in which the cathedi-al 
stands. The public school and the city hall are 
ruined; but the cathedral is still intact, and latterly 
the Germans have been less busy. 

Our captain had been looking forward all day 
long to something, and when we started up the 
hill which overlooks Thann I could see "the love- 
light in his 'een." When we reached the observa- 
tion-point he handed me his glasses, and, pointing 
to a steeple far away in the plain, said: "Look. 
There is Mulhouse." It was his native city — a city 
for which every heart in reconquered Alsace is wist- 
ful, a city once retaken by French troops early in 
the war, but then impossible to hold against the 
Germans. 

Here my captain was born, as were his fore- 
fathers before him. They owned a great cotton 
manufacturing business. He was French in back- 
ground and sympathy, and when he reached the 
age of sixteen he was told that he would either have 
to attest his German citizenship by serving in the 
army or clear out. He moved to Belfort and 
motored daily to Mulhouse to look after his busi- 
ness; but, in accordance with the German regula- 
tions, he was not permitted to sleep there. 

Mulhouse nestles in the middle of the Rhenish 
plain. We were unable to descry the Rhine, fifteen 
miles distant. From our point of view the valley 
of the Thur was serene and lovely, an incredible 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 233 

picture of peace in war. Yet within two and a 
half miles of where we stood lay a bare, brown 
strip in the midst of the green. This was the no- 
man's-land between the French and German 
trenches. Through the glasses we could make out 
the two lines gashed into the plain. On the French 
side there was cultivation to within a few score yards 
of the first-line trenches. Women were at work in 
the fields and teams of horses and oxen drew their 
loads along the roads. 

We lay down on the grass, and the two literary 
men who were of our party talked of English 
poetry. They agreed on Shakespeare and Milton 
as belonging in a class by themselves, but there was 
a controversy over third place, which the French- 
man assigned to Shelley. The Enghsh critic was 
all for Wordsworth. Somewhat meekly in the 
presence of such literary overlordship, I piped up 
for Burns. 

"He is not in the discussion at all," said the 
Englishman. "Poetry must be song or it must be 
revelation. Burns's work, while very good, is 
neither. He simply expresses human emotions. 
Wordsworth is clearly third among English 
poets." 

Over our head the droning avion came again. 

"We must be going," said the captain "In a few 
minutes they will be shooting at us. It always 
happens, first the airplane, then the 77's. That 



234 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

is one advantage in dealing with the Germans. 
They always do the same thing." 

As we turned to descend I noticed for the first 
time a ruined building that had probably served 
as a place of refreshment. 

"The Bodies did that last week," said the 
captain. "They may get playful any minute now." 

At the bottom he bade us good-by and went back 
to his post at Bitschweiler, and right sorry were we 
to part with the gallant son of Mulhouse. 

From Thann to Massevaux is an hour's drive on 
a road which for most of the way parallels the 
trenches at a distance easily within shell-fire. The 
run was made without incident, and from Masse- 
vaux we proceeded to La Chapelle to dine with the 
division commander and his staff. 

The general I found to be an Alsatian, and I 
thought I could see points of resemblance to Gen- 
eral Pershing. He showed a deep feeling for 
America, and we were greatly impressed with his 
steady, soldier-like character. The dinner was 
dominated by the Stars and Stripes and by cordial 
talk of good-fellowship and cooperation to beat the 
Bodies. An interesting feature was the presence 
of a lieutenant who had lived a year in Manchester, 
Vermont, and who acted as interpreter for the 
happy occasion. "I never had a minute's doubt as 
to where America would land," he said. 

We got an early start the next morning and 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 235 

drove back to La Chapelle to pay our respects to 
the general, and the English-speaking lieutenant 
then took us in charge for a di'ive to another portion 
of the front. It was evidently desired that we 
should see as much as possible. The portion of 
Alsace under French occupation is only a fraction 
of the whole, but the French feeling is great. 

Our guide wanted us to see a school where the 
children were being taught French; so we went to 
a village a few miles distant for that purpose. We 
could hear the guns booming and shells bursting in 
the distance, while the shrill little voices were piping 
recitations under the leadership of a uniformed 
master. The old German teacher was there, too, 
as a kind of assistant under the new regime. 

There was something very pitiful in the picture 
of these frail children of war. How long ! oh, how 
long! For centuries it had been the same in Alsace 
and Lorraine, first one harrow and then another 
driving over a race that is fundamentally neither 
French nor German. They are Celts to the core. 
The Celtic tongue rebels against "the language of 
horses," and the result is the Alsatian patois. Now 
the children were learning French. The struggle 
of their childish optimism against hard conditions 
reminded me of Robert Louis Stevenson's constant 
wonderment at that ever-present quality in God's 
creatures. The poorest of them, even the ants and 
insects having only a brief span of life, and that 



236 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

always under the menace of destruction by exposure 
and starvation, yet pursue their tasks with what 
seems to the human observer a cheerful energy. 

So it is with the unfortunate inhabitants of these 
war-devastated countries. In the trenches, behind 
them, among all who endure real hardships, you 
find that optimism, which is the very finest thing 
that God has planted in the hearts of men. These 
little children ranging from five to twelve, and the 
treble of their voices in recitation and song, will be 
among my ineffaceable memories. 

The lieutenant-colonel in command of the first 
line at this front was a splendid Paris-bred officer 
under whose guidance we proceeded to an observa- 
tion-point not much over a mile behind the French 
and German trenches. But with a German avion 
droning in the sky above we dared not stand long 
in a group. 

At the colonel's headquarters I was provided with 
a pleasant surprise. The colonel had me step down 
ibst from the car, and a band which had been drawn 
up in front of headquarters inmiediately struck up 
"The Star-Spangled Banner." We all stood at at- 
tention with swelling hearts. The leader was in- 
troduced to me and told me that he had reproduced 
and written out the music from memory the night 
before, and had taught it to the musicians that 
morning so as to play it in honor of a visiting 
American, 



ALSACE KECONQUERED 237 

Another French soldier was brought up to be 
introduced. He was a naturalized American 
citizen, Alphonse Nicole, who was living in San 
Francisco when war was declared. He came back 
to fight for his native land, and had been promoted 
to sergeant. His eyes shone as he spoke of what 
his adopted country had done to help put the Boche 
under. 

Throughout the Alsatian trip I had wondered at 
the immunity enjoyed by the towns, with German 
trenches so near. The colonel told me that it was 
because the Germans hoped to get these towns back 
and also because the wives, children, and other 
relatives of German soldiers inhabited them. This 
condition gives a certain appearance of unreality 
to war in Alsace except at strategic points like 
Hartmannsweilerkopf. 

We drove to Belfort in time for lunch, and de- 
scending at the Grand Hotel, in the center of the 
town, we were surprised to see that the whole facade 
had been peppered with shell-fire. The omni- 
presence of war was again shown when we entered 
the hotel. The woman clerk fell into conversation 
with my colleague, and told him that at the 
beginning of hostilities she and her nephew had been 
employed in the Criterion in Piccadilly Circus. 
The nephew at once enlisted in the French Army. 
In one of the battles of the Chemin des Dames a 
year ago he had disappeared. She had heard 



238 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

nothing since, and had given him up for dead. 

And so it is everywhere in France. There is a 
certain alleviation in the universality of the bereave- 
ment and suffering. It is the normal state. There 
comes from it a consolation that recalls a story of 
Buddha. A woman who had lost her only son be- 
sought him to bring the dead back to life. 

"I command you," said Buddha for reply, "to 
travel over India and seek for a grain of mustard 
in a house that has not known death." 

After a long absence the woman returned. 

"And have ye found the mustard seed?" asked 
Buddha. 

"No," replied the woman; "but everywhere I 
have found sympathy and consolation." 

Alsace and Lorraine are the dominating topic 
in France at this moment. We are all of us very 
free in thinking how we would manage Germany 
if we were in control of it. If I were the kaiser, 
it seems to me that I would give France a title deed 
to Alsace and Lorraine right now. It would be 
a sensational move but it would do more to enable 
Germany to come out of the trouble she has made 
for herself with a comparatively whole skin than 
anj^thing else she could do. If we are to have an 
end of Prussian militarism, — and we are, — it will 
be German energy and enterprise rather than 
frontier lines that will give that industrial com- 



ALSACE RECONQUERED 239 

munity a hold on the indispensable mineral re- 
sources of Lorraine and Alsace. 

These provinces are the double tap-root of con- 
flict, ruin, and misery in Europe. The few- 
thousand square miles and two million population 
of Alsace and Lorraine have cost not less than 
twenty million lives, and for centuries the insoluble 
problem of their rightful ownership has been the 
ever-present death's-head over the prosperity and 
happiness of millions of human beings. 

I came away from Alsace with one strong con- 
viction. A plebiscite to determine allegiance is im- 
practicable. Among other reasons for this belief 
are the following: 

1. — The present population of two million in- 
cludes about four hundred thousand Germans im- 
ported into the provinces after the Franco-Prussia 
War. While these are residents, they have never 
become assimilated into the people. They obtained 
possession of the property of the French unfairly, 
and their moral status is tainted. 

2. — About two hundred and fifty thousand 
French were driven back to France by the un- 
fair policy of Germany, and these, though properly 
a part of the provinces, would not be allowed to 
vote. 

3. — Germany, having been in occupation, was in 
the position to force men into her armies, and the 



240 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

vast majority of serviceable Alsatians and Lor- 
rainers are German soldiers. 

4. — Most of the inliabitants who have scattered 
over the world since the Franco-Prussian War are 
French sympathizers who could not be happy under 
German rule. This has further deprived Alsace 
and Lorraine of the means of making vocal their 
natural preference for France. 

5. — Who could hold a plebiscite and guarantee 
its fairness? It would be difficult, perhaps an im- 
possible problem. 

Monsieur Painleve in his interview in "The New 
York Times," Premier Ribot in his Fourth of July 
speech, every spokesman for France, on every pos- 
sible occasion, sounds the same note: *'A great 
moral question cannot be arbitrated. Alsace and 
Lorraine are ours and must be returned to France 
unconditionally and forever." 



CHAPTER XIV 

TO THE RESCUE OF ITALY 

In Italy one sees much of the famous Bersagiieri, 
wearing their head-gear of cock-feathers, and mov- 
ing about as hght as lapwings. These men go 
through several processes of selection and are one 
of the finest picked bodies in any army. The thing 
that weeds out all weaklings who may have any de- 
sire to go with these troops is that they march at 
the double-quick. A man has got to be young, 
strong, sound in wind, heart, lungs, and legs to pass 
this test. I was told that three whole divisions, or 
sixty thousand of these splendid fellows, were wiped 
out in the retreat from the Isonzo. 

The Italian people have been eager for their king 
to show up strongly and every inch a king in these 
trying times. Personality in the king would do 
almost more to unify Italy than any other one thing. 
The king is modest, faithful, and capable, but too 
timid for the self-assertion which the Italians long 
for in him. Self-sacrifice at the front is no trouble 
to him at all, but he hates to come out in addresses 
to the people, and that is precisely what they want 
him to like and to do. The king's shrinking from 
publicity is probably in some measure due to his 

241 



242 FLASHES FHOM THE FRONT 

short stature. When his queen is on her knees and 
he is standing up, their height is precisely the same. 
The queen is a model mother, but she, too, has little 
fancy for the public and spectacular side of the 
royal office. 

Paris, October 31, 1917. After forty-eight 
hours of strenuous work on the Italian situation and 
other very important matters, the French prime 
minister Painleve gave me an appointment at the 
War Office at 10 o'clock last night, and made a 
statement on behalf of France and the other Allies. 
Before discussing general questions, M. Painleve 
spoke very earnestly of Italy. 

"France and England," he said, "will fly to 
Italy's aid with all means available. We are not 
only impelled by military interest. We can never 
forget that our valiant ally, Italy, voluntarily took 
up arms and exposed herself to such perils as these 
in order to defend the sacred cause of right for 
which we are all fighting. 

"The recent French offensive, flawless in its 
method and execution and irresistible in its plan, is 
significant of the sustained fighting power of 
France, of that reserve force which can still be 
drawn on after over three years at grips with the 
most formidable military organization the world has 
ever seen. 

"If we have our troubles in France, they are 



TO THE RESCUE OF ITALY 243 

superficial, and tend to cure themselves by their own 
manifestations. There has never been a minute 
since the Marne that France has not been more than 
equal to every obligation imposed by the war. Our 
burdens have been heavy, but never beyond our 
strength. In fields and factories our women and 
children have proved worthy rivals to our soldiers 
in constancy and courage. 

"All the belligerents have been subject to the 
exhaustion of a long-drawn-out war, but America's 
participation puts the Entente on an entirely dif- 
ferent basis from the enemy. The incalculable 
fresh resom'ces, moral and material, thus thrown in 
on our side raise the average of endurance and strik- 
ing capacity as against the opponent not thus re- 
cruited, and worn to the breaking-point by the pro- 
longed military and economic stress. 

"That is the vital point in the situation as it 
stands to-day. France, England, and Italy, sup- 
ported by a new ally of unmeasured material 
wealth, but still richer in spirit and unbreakable 
will, are shoulder to shoulder in one sure purpose. 

"There is to be neither halt nor parley until the 
German brute force is shattered and world-terror- 
ism is ended. Momentary trials which are afflict- 
ing Italy, and against which the force of Allies will 
make successful headway, may delay, but not 
modify, the issue of this formidable war, which 
henceforth is inevitable. Germany may make other 



244 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

spectacular moves in the far-off and temporarily in- 
defensible areas, but we are dealing solid blows on 
the western front. 

"Whenever Geniiany is sincerely ready to con- 
sider peace it will be because she is beaten, and when 
she is beaten, the victors will write the terms in con- 
formity with justice and the rights of humanity, 
steadfastly refusing to admit any compromise with 
violence. This note of high resolve struck by 
President Wilson in all his recent utterances has 
been accepted and adopted by the European Allies. 
We stand together in complete harmony, and we 
are convinced that there is no other road to peace 
save by victory. 

"The arrival of the Americans in the trenches," 
M. Painleve concluded, "is greeted with the great- 
est joy by their French comrades in arms and by 
our whole nation. It is a beginning not only of the 
utmost symbolical importance, but of enormous 
material significance. Before long I intend to pass 
an evening in one of the trenches occupied by the 
American troops in order to bring to them person- 
ally and on the spot the greeting and good wishes 
of France." 

Turin, November 5, 1917. I had my first chance 
of seeing how Italy was taking the crisis. Crowds 
lined the route for miles to see the soldiers off for 
the front, but there was no excitement. 



TO THE RESCUE OF ITALY 245 

I occupied a compartment with an Italian officer 
returning from Petrograd, and as we were invaded 
in the free Itahan way by fresh sets of passengers 
going short distances, with whom the officer con- 
versed freely, we got a good line on the feeling of 
this part of Italy. The people had been shocked 
to the core. They were unprepared. The very 
worst they had reckoned on was the halt of the 
Italian advance for the winter, which was causing 
considerable grumbling. 

When Cadorna's frank communique was read 
by the crowds assembled in the Galleria Vittorio 
Emanuele, the famous Milan arcade, last Sun- 
day night, scores momentarily gave way to their 
grief, weeping hysterically ; but soon a common in- 
stinct of courage and loyalty asserted itself, and the 
whole crowd joined in shouts of acclaim for Italy 
and the king. The latter possesses the love and 
confidence of the people, who also continued to 
trust Cadorna. Reasons for this loss in a few days 
of all that had been taken with sacrifice, and 
cherished so passionately as the homeland free from 
alien rule, are sought elsewhere than at the com- 
mando supremo. 

Milan, which is Italy's chief commercial city, is 
also the center of the war spirit. The public here 
is uninformed about details of the military opera- 
tions, does not even know the present army head- 
quarters, but faith is pretty general in Cadorna and 



246 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

in Allied cooperation. I have not heard one word 
of criticism of any ally except Russia. I feel safe 
in saying that this part of Italy and, so far as I 
can gather, other parts, have stood the shock of the 
disaster well, and that there is not going to be the 
kind of collapse that alone could make Italy put an 
eventual Alhed victory in danger. 

Rome, November 8, 1917. My observations here 
confirm previous insistence upon the urgent need 
of centralized methods of managing the war. At 
bottom this war is the biggest business enterprise 
ever undertaken, and while the kaiser handles his 
end of it as such, each of the Allies is more or less 
playing its own separate game. With vast re- 
sources, the Allies have discussed and postponed 
critical decisions until they have lost the advantage. 

To mention one recent instance ; if the Korniloff 
movement had been handled by the Allies as the 
kaiser would have handled such an opportunity, the 
Russian situation might have been stabilized and 
the Italian drive rendered impossible. 

There had not been a single Allied action, with 
the exception of the Battle of the IMarne, which 
ranks as a great aggressive stroke. The Allies are 
not organized to initiate and execute big policies. 
Instead of looking ahead and planning on a big 
scale, they yield where pressure is applied, with the 
result that they usually trail along a few days or 



TO THE RESCUE OF ITALY 247 

weeks behind Germany. Purely local and political 
matters divide and divert attention in the Allied 
chancelleries. 

Coming on top of many previous heartbreaking 
lost opportunities, the present menace in Italy is 
quite serious enough to rally the Entente powers 
at last into substituting for the town meeting some 
plan under which they can see the war situation as 
a whole, and concentrate with foresight, originality, 
and driving power, as we understand those things 
in America. 

In a word, after thi'ee years, it is time to quit 
playing amateur against professional. If America 
gives the lead, all the rest will follow. There are 
directed against us none of the petty jealousies 
peculiar to Europe, and all the Allied countries 
have complete confidence in our disinterestedness 
and sound leadership. 

November 13, 1917. To understand the present 
situation in Italy, we must consider three essential 
facts : 

The first is geographical. The remark is attrib- 
uted to Napoleon: "Italy is a wonderful country, 
but too long." From Turin to Naples and back 
is as long a trip for a Caproni as from Turin to 
London. 

The second fact is racial and dynastic. The king- 
dom of Italy is only fifty years old, composed of 



248 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

units widely separated, and differing in race and in 
historic antecedents. 

The third fact is that there is a kingdom within 
a kingdom. The Vatican is in Italy, but not of 
it. It is necessary to be careful on this del- 
icate ground, where much controversy is raging. 
Enough to say that no one can grasp the present 
condition who does not realize that in Italy two 
separate and inherently antagonistic powers occupy 
the same ground, the one spiritual, with the tem- 
poral in retrospect and prospect, and the other 
purely temporal. They rule over the same sub- 
jects, for virtually all Italy is Catholic. History 
has bequeathed this condition. 

If all Italy had the spirit of Milan, no question 
would arise as to its power of resistance to the Ger- 
man invasion or as to a separate peace. The cap- 
ital of Lombardy is the chief jewel in the crown of 
the Italian Kingdom. Not even in America does 
city pride exist more strongly than in Milan. 

When I arrived three days ago I found every- 
where deep disappointment that the Isonzo line 
should have given way, and dread of the possible 
consequences; but there was neither panic nor in- 
difference. I attended service at the great cathe- 
dral. On every face was written anxiety, but also 
earnestness and determination. An enterprising 
and energetic people have built a fine city and are 
filled with zeal for future efforts. They watch with 



TO THE RESCUE OF ITALY 249 

anxious eyes the approaching Germanic tide from 
the Venetian plain, realizing also the possibilities 
of new eruptions from the Cadore and the Trentino. 
Tears gather in their eyes as they contemplate the 
city which they have been building with such labor, 
and love so well; but there is no white feather in 
Milan. The Milanese will die, if necessary, in the 
proud belief that their city is the center of Italy's 
will to war. 

Rome is a different story. There is no danger 
here of German murder and pillage. The censor- 
ship is strict, and the masses are ignorant of the 
seriousness of the Northern situation. Further- 
more, Rome lives much in the past, and her climate 
is relaxing. Rome has a great many "knockers." 
There are circles which take pride in holding "well- 
balanced" views. From such sources flows a con- 
stant stream of cynical sanity, which is destructive 
of the war spirit. Only in the house of spiritual 
frenzy will men make the sacrifices imposed by the 
defense of the nation. 

In Rome one encounters few fine enthusiasms. 
The German invasion is discussed in an entirely 
different temper from that which one meets in 
Milan. Warm-blooded optimism is non-existent. 
There is polite appreciation of America's response 
to Italy's needs. 

By common consent Baron Sonnino is Italy's 
leading figure. He is of Jewish origin, and Eng- 



250 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

lish on his mother's side. I had introductions to a 
family in Rome which is on intimate terms with 
him, and I hoped to get an interview, but found 
that it was quite as impossible as to interview the 
Grand Lama of Tibet. He has never once talked 
to a newspaper man even privately, and is the most 
aloof of all the world's statesmen. Sonnino's bril- 
liant mind illuminates everything within a certain 
radius, but the circle on which he throws its light is 
small. 

It is reported that the Swiss are heavily mobilized 
on the Italian frontier. The reason given by a 
well-informed authority is this: in previous wars 
Italian and Austrian troops have not been over- 
scrupulous about territorial boundaries. Switzer- 
land is determined in the present circumstances that 
there shall not be the smallest violation of her neu- 
trality. 

November 14, 1917. From different sources, in- 
cluding military experts returning from the front, 
I am able to piece together the following explana- 
tion of the break on the Isonzo, that led to the 
Italian rout. 

The positions held by the Italians, won by the 
greatest valor and by immense losses, seemed al- 
most impregnable except to protracted siege. The 
terrain opposite Tolmino on the Isonzo front was 
precipitous, and the position along the top of this 



TO THE RESCUE OF ITALY 251 

small mountain-range was strongly fortified with 
cannon of large caliber. The slopes and foot of 
the ridge were fortified by trenches with wire en- 
tanglements and other obstacles. The Isonzo 
River flows at the foot of this fortified ridge. 
Along the top of the ridge ran a new and excellent 
road, macadamized and drained. This position in 
front of Tolmino appeared to be very strong, and 
I am told that this view was held by the supreme 
command of the Italian Army. They have been 
criticized for placing troops there who might have 
been infected by the peace propaganda, but it can 
be stated in their favor that troops with any spirit 
whatever could have held this position sufficiently 
long for reinforcements to be sent them in case of 
wavering. 

It would seem, however, that the Second Army, 
unknown to the higher command, had been honey- 
combed by sedition, fostered by very subtle so- 
cialist and other propaganda, which was coupled 
with an intense desire for peace and for an oppor- 
tunity to return to their families, for peasants com- 
posed the largest part of this army. Some of the 
troops it has also been stated, when captured or 
when searched, had on their persons copies of the 
Socialist paper "Avanti." 

It is known that a very heavy bombardment was 
turned on the trenches in front of Tolmino, and that 
a shell fell within every hundred feet of trenches 



252 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

every fifteen seconds for two hours preceding the 
attack. The Austro- German attack was aided by 
mist and fog from the river valley. This, however, 
was a normal condition, as in the morning, even 
in August and the beginning of September in a 
good season, this mist was usual, particularly along 
the upper and middle Isonzo Valley. 

It has been stated that the trenches of the Italian 
position that were carried by the Austrians were 
first bombarded with a new gas, which nauseated 
the men in the trenches during the first part of 
the bombardment, and compelled them to remove 
their masks. Four to five minutes after this first 
bombardment of nauseating gas, asphyxiating gas 
was used, which caught the men with their masks 
off, and confusion as weU as a great many casualties 
resulted therefrom. 

The intelhgence work of the Austro-Germans 
was excellent. It was reported that the first shot 
fu-ed during the bombardment destroyed the tel- 
ephone central of that section of the front. The 
disaffection was not confined to men in the front 
line trenches only, but was prevalent among the 
reserves, and many positions in the front-Hne 
trenches were held until the Italians were vir- 
tually annihilated ; for the reserves, who should have 
supported them, had already retreated. Thus a 
gap in the line was left where there was virtually 
no resistance. It is said that the way to Udine was 



TO THE RESCUE OF ITALY 253 

absolutely clear, if the Germans had only known it, 
thirty-six hours after their first attack. 

As there are very few roads in the mountains, 
when one portion of the defensive line in the lines 
gave way, undoubtedly these roads became heavily 
congested, and the rolling up of the line on both 
sides of the gap, once begun, could not be arrested. 
About twelve kilometers of the defensive line fell 
at once and through this gap poured the Austro- 
German offensive, virtually unresisted except by a 
few isolated organizations, such as the Bersaglieri 
and Alpine regiments, who were almost annihilated. 
When the opening through the line became so large 
that it could not be closed, it caused the withdrawal 
of the armies on both sides. The withdrawal added 
to the confusion. 

I have also been informed that wireless and tele- 
graphic codes were captured by the enemy or ob- 
tained by treachery. The supreme command at 
Udine could not communicate in any way with the 
lesser commands except by means of messengers. 

Though twenty-five hundred guns of different 
calibers were captured, many of these gims were 
old and of obsolete patterns, and a great many, 
while they were a loss to the Itahans, could not be 
used against them, as they had destroyed many 
parts before they were captured. 

The great difficulty at present seems to be not 
so much lack of men, but the great loss of arms, 



254 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

equipment, guns, and munitions of every descrip- 
tion. 

A few days ago a royal decree was promulgated 
by the supreme command, giving five days' grace 
for all soldiers separated from their armies to report 
to military authority. If they did not do this within 
the time specified, they would be treated as deserters 
and shot in the back, according to the army penal 
code. 



CHAPTER XV 

GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 

December 1, 1916. When I embarked for Liver- 
pool, on Satm-day, November 18, I fomid awaiting 
me on board the clean, comfortable, swift, and safe 
American liner St. Paul a letter from a man prom- 
inent in affairs, well known among his intimates for 
a childlike curiosity exceeding that of a certain 
famous Chinese diplomat. This letter set out a 
score or more of questions, and, as they show forth 
a typical American interest, I have sought ma- 
terial for categorical answers. 

What, if any, effect has the increased rate of tax- 
ation had upon the apparent life and habits of 
Englishmen? 

In the sense of imposing real hardship, very little. 
The manner of life has been much altered, but 
fundamentally, chiefly in quarters w^here alteration 
has meant improvement. It is as it was with the 
philosopher in the garret. The garret was very 
small and crowded, and a visitor exclaimed : 

"Why, you have n't room here to swing a cat." 

"I don't want to swing a cat," the philosopher 
replied. 

255 



256 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

The well-provided classes discover that with small 
sense of sacrifice they can give up much luxury 
that had been masquerading as necessity. Life has 
become compressed and restricted; the contrasts 
which usually differentiate plenty and poverty and 
give the sense of satisfaction and comfort to the for- 
tunate are now furnished by the suffering and self- 
denial of those directly connected with the war, the 
soldiers and their near relatives, while this latter 
class in turn are sustained by the heroism of their 
sacrifice. Society has thus established a new bal- 
ance and goes on without complaint, perhaps even 
with a larger measure of inner happiness. 

What is true of the upper and middle classes 
would be true of the lower in similar circumstances 
were it not for the fact that the flow of money to 
labor is in vastly increased volume since the war. 
There is, therefore, no economic pinch in that quar- 
ter. The danger lies in the formation of habits the 
indulgence of which will become impossible after 
the war and the necessary readjustment to the re- 
turn of normal conditions. 

Are the English people doing anything the better 
to conserve the resources of the country ? Are they, 
for instance, cultivating more of the ground, that 
was formerly given up for parks and hunting pur- 
poses? Are they making any definite efforts to 
restrict waste and unnecessary use of food and ma- 
terials ? 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 257 

The a<;reage under cultivation in 1916 showed a 
decrease as compared with 1915, owing to labor 
scarcity. Farm labor is too heavy for English 
women. They cannot stand it, and the males have 
been drawn off to militarj'^ duty and munition-mak- 
ing. It cannot be denied that England is still 
backward both in organized effort to promote pro- 
duction and to stop waste. A measure for the latter 
purpose is now going thi'ough the painful process 
of parturition in the cabinet, amid the sneers and 
gibes of the opposition press. 

What particularly impressed you on your ar- 
rival in England after an absence of fifteen months? 

The changelessness of England. As 3Ir. Brit- 
ling remarks, "Nothing is ever changed in England 
except the mind of England when that mind is 
made up to change something." 

The country-side looks much the same as it did 
when I last saw it. London is much darker at 
night, the parts lying beyond the main arteries being 
very dark indeed. The streets are pretty bare of 
pedestrian traffic after, say, eight o'clock. The 
busses and cabs go swiftly through the darkness, 
with a comparatively small percentage of accidents. 
The bus service is well maintained, but cabs are 
scarce. Women have not yet developed as drivers. 
The spirit of the people is about the same. 

London, July 18, 1917. The change at the Ad- 



258 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

miralty, by which Sir Eric Geddes succeeds Sir 
Edward Carson, calls attention to submarine con- 
ditions, and there have been sharp revisions of opin- 
ion in the last few hours as a result of a reexami- 
nation of facts and figures. 

The prime minister's recent assurance of safety 
from the submarine had a sedative effect on the 
public mind, but discussion by well-informed per- 
sons, particularly in banking and commercial cir- 
cles, during the last few days has brought out con- 
ditions that are disquieting. Confidence about the 
submarine situation appears to have had no founda- 
tion more substantial than the hope that some sci- 
entific means was surely in the way of being found 
to put the submarine finally and entirely out of bus- 
iness. The syllogism was: America is a wonder- 
fully inventive country; America is now a bellig- 
erent ; ergo, America will provide a solution for the 
submarine menace. 

That part of England that wakes up somewhat 
ahead of the rest has suddenly grasped a fact that 
is so simple that it ought to have been realized and 
acted on long ago. The average man has been 
thinking about food, — it has been plentiful, — or 
thinking about Germany's threat to reduce England 
in two months. Five have elapsed, and England is 
no worse off. What has escaped attention, and 
what is now brought to the fore by the change at 
the Admiralty is the inexorable fact, which any- 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 259 

body with knowledge of the rule of three can cipher 
out for himself, that at the present rate of con- 
struction and destruction there cannot possibly be 
at the end of a few months shipping enough, unless 
British commitments elsewhere are considerably 
curtailed, to feed England and France and main- 
tain the present armies in the field; and as for con- 
veying America's armies to Europe and maintain- 
ing them, it will simply be out of the question. 

The loss of ships by submarines totals six hundred 
thousand tons a month, or from two to three times 
the total of new construction. There is no possibil- 
ity whatever of construction capacity overtaking the 
present rate of loss in time to avoid a peace being 
forced on the Alhes. What is wanted, therefore, 
is largely to increase the destruction of U-boats. 

The British Government is, and the American 
Government ought to be, eye to eye with the stag- 
gering fact that the Allies have got to find a way to 
curb the submarine or lose the war, a way not yet 
found and not even approached except exper- 
imentally. Damage by submarines has been re- 
duced by American cooperation, and every single 
ton of craft effective against submarines ought to 
be sent to European waters without a single hour's 
delay. 

It is crystal-clear that in American waters pro- 
tection is not needed from the submarine, and to 
keep destroyers on the Atlantic seaboard is sheer 



260 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

waste when the situation here is so critical. The 
Enghsh fleet over here protects all interests over 
there. For the purpose of this war, the Irish Sea 
is just as truly American as Long Island Sound. 

It is around the Irish Coast that the fight to make 
a world safe for democracy is at its deadliest crisis. 
No mihtary victory, short of marching into Berlin, 
can take the place of a death-blow to the German 
U-boat. 

September 6. Although I had been in London 
when the Zeppelins were calling in the outskirts, I 
had never before been in the very midst of an air 
raid, and the experience of Wednesday night was 
a novel one. The strangest thing about it was how 
we should all be so cool in such exciting and dan- 
gerous circumstances. 

The first notice was the passing of the fii*e-engines 
in the street below. Of course we got out of bed 
for that. A policeman on a bicycle immediately 
followed, wearing on his body a "take cover" sign 
and sounding his bicycle-bell. Within a few min- 
utes we heard four explosions which might liave been 
right around the corner. Bombs were falling a dis- 
tance of nearly four miles, and exploding as they 
struck the earth. My flat is on the fifth floor of 
a six-story building, and has a big bay-window that 
commands a fine view. I stood there for a few 
minutes watching the search-lights and trying to 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 261 

make out the Gothas, the droning of which was dis- 
tinctly audible, and otherwise see something of the 
show; but was finally obliged to yield to feminine 
insistence, and repaired to an inside hall on the 
third floor, where the occupants of the building had 
taken refuge. 

This hall had no windows, and as the building is 
of concrete, was comparatively safe; but I might 
as well have been in America for seeing or hearing 
the air raid. We stayed there for three-quarters 
of an hour, and then went back to the flat and 
watched the search-lights from the bay-window for 
a few minutes. The "all-clear" policeman had n't 
come along, but it looked as if the raid was over. 
Traffic in the street below seemed normal, and the 
only evidence that something unusual had happened 
was the presence of groups of people, including a 
party of childi'en, staring up into the heavens. 
There was a brilliant moon, but the light, low-lying 
clouds floated about in the sky. Some one in my 
party remarked that they "sinned against the 
moon." 

I decided to go to bed, but before I went to sleep 
there were further explosions. I stayed in my flat 
this time. I telephoned several newspaper offices 
to find out what was going on. From one came the 
answer: "Something is going on, and we rather 
think it is serious, but we have no reports yet." I 
wish I were permitted to specify localities : it would 



262 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

make the answer from that newspaper office very 
interesting for its proximity to damage and loss of 
life. 

The second visit of the Germans was brief, and 
I went to bed and to sleep without knowing the 
nearness and extent of the danger. The next 
morning when I visited some of the places where 
the forty bombs had exploded, I realized that I had 
been immediately in the path of the German planes, 
and that a bomb exploding at my corner would 
probably have killed everybody who happened to 
be standing at a window in the vicinity. The ex- 
plosion carries with it a shower of shrapnel, which 
smashes window-panes, and the broken bits of glass 
are as fatal as the shrapnel itself. The bomb that 
fell at the hospital entrance broke every window- 
pane in the block, and there were literally hundreds 
of shrapnel-scars on the stone and brick walls, pits 
ranging from an inch to six inches in depth and 
diameter. 

London, September 7. The claim made by Ad- 
miral von Scheer that any child could take a pencil 
and a piece of paper and reckon the destruction of 
England through the submarine, and the general 
belief in Germany that Hindenburg has only to hold 
things level while the submarine defeats the Allies, 
have caused fresh discussion of this all-important 
question in England, though with intelligible figures 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 263 

lacking and only the jargon of sinkings by ship to 
go on. 

It is a discussion in an intellectual vacuum. The 
figures published by "The New York Times" on 
July 19, showing an average monthly loss of six 
hundred thousand tons, constitute the only real in- 
formation that has reached the public for six 
months. The figures quoted by the prime minister 
in answer to questions by Kennedy Jones dealt 
with British shipping only, and in such a way as 
to be very confusing. I am able to state that since 
the period dealt with by the figures published in 
"The New York Times" on July 19, — namely, the 
first six months of the present year, — there has been 
a reduction in the losses at the rate of nearly one 
hundred and fifty thousand tons a month. 

A number of different elements have entered into 
this reduction, but undoubtedly efiicient American 
cooperation has been the chief single element in it. 
The convoy system is working as well as can be 
expected in view of the shortage in escorting vessels. 

The absurd reports published in several New 
York newspapers on August 19, quoting Admirals 
Jellicoe and Sims as authority for the warning, that 
the German high-seas fleet may elude the British 
cordon and strike with all its strength in American 
waters, and that a submarine offensive will be in- 
stituted by Germany on the American side of the 
Atlantic, are believed here to come from German 



264 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

sources, and to be put out for the purpose of pre- 
venting the dispatch from America of the escorting 
vessels, which are necessary to perfect the convoy- 
system. 

Admu'als Jelhcoe and Sims are both known to 
hold views absolutely opposed to any such theory 
as that attributed to them in the publication of 
August 19. All respectable naval authority here 
is in agi'eement with the opinion that the appear- 
ance of any kind of German fleet in American 
waters, or that a serious attack of any sort or de- 
scription, is utterly out of the question. 

Whether such reports emanate from Germany or 
whether Germany's pui'poses are unwittingly served 
by the incompetent in America, the fact remains 
that all naval activities are now centered in the sub- 
marine zone in European waters. It is there that 
the Allied naval effort must be concentrated. It 
would be a mistake to draw too much encourage- 
ment from the reduction in the tonnage sunk by 
German submarines in July and August. The fa- 
vorable showing is partly due to the great effort 
put forth by Germany in the month of April, when 
the figm'es were roundly eight hundred thousand 
tons in four weeks, which established an artificial 
basis of comparison. In the first six months there 
were also raider losses aggregating 151,000 tons. 
The total figures for the six months, including 
raider losses, was slightly in excess of 3,600,000 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 265 

tons, not including steamers damaged or beached, 
but not sunk. Of these losses in the first six months 
of the year about fifty-eight per cent, were British, 
twenty-five per cent, neutral, and seventeen per 
cent. Allied. 

When the losses are six hundred thousand tons 
a month and construction is two hundred thousand 
tons a month, there is a resultant net-loss of four 
hundi-ed thousand tons a month, and if this went 
on long enough. Admiral von Scheer would be jus- 
tified in his statement. We cannot be sure, but we 
can fairly hope, that the reduction shown in July 
and August will be maintained; but even so the 
Allies would still be taking an enormous gambler's 
risk unless the situation were greatly improved both 
in respect to reduction in tonnage sunk and con- 
struction of new tonnage. 

The next six months will be extremely trying, 
and it is of the highest importance, that every nerve 
be strained to strengthen convoy protection along 
the lines laid down by the Allied naval authorities. 
The difference between strenuous concentration of 
effort for providing adequate escort and a division 
of resources for a pm-ely imaginary submarine or 
raider attack by Germany in American waters 
might prove to be decisive in the success or defeat 
of Germany's supreme effort with the U-boats. 

America has done well in the submarine cam- 
paign, but effort should be constantly increased. 



266 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

To deal with big realities appeals to the American 
spirit and the submarine campaign is the very heart 
of the European War situation. Everything that 
I have heard in Switzerland, France, and England 
confii'ms my belief that Germany is building her 
hopes on the submarine, and the very moment that 
destruction of shipping is reduced to a point any- 
where near construction, Berhn will beg for peace 
unless victories on land should make a radical 
change in Germany's position. 

London, November 17. The message sent out 
by the Associated Press, giving the opinion of an 
English journalist now in America to the effect 
that last week's showing marked the definite and 
conclusive defeat of the submarine is much depre- 
cated in circles here which understand the realities 
of submarine warfare. It is regretted that such 
importance should be attached to a single week's 
return. Those who understand the subject best 
state that there is just as much reason to generalize 
in the reverse direction. "^lore likely they are 
spitting on their hands for the next go," said an 
American to-day. While there is general grat- 
ification at the unique figure, the event is being cele- 
brated as isolated and casual rather than as mark- 
ing final victory over the submarine. 

The common sense of the situation clearly is that 
while distinct progress has been made in fighting 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 267 

the submarine, we are still far from safe. In the 
month of October the rate of destruction was con- 
siderably higher than in September, a fact that dis- 
poses of the ill-founded view that the submarine 
chapter of the war is closed. The under-sea op- 
erations have a pendulum-like movement. August 
was comparatively heavy, September showed a big 
drop, the actual figures for four weeks being even 
lower than the estimate I cabled to the "Times" 
from Paris on October 9. The Germans must have 
become alarmed and made extra efforts, for toward 
the end of October the English and American de- 
fenders observed a greater number of submarines 
at work on the Atlantic than had ever before been 
known, though owing to the organized defense the 
aggregate sinkings totaled only one half the high 
mark of April. 

The Germans evidently exhausted themselves in 
the October effort, as the low returns in the early 
part of November clearly indicate. The boats 
broke down, the crews were worn out, and the effect 
of the strain was otherwise shown. The delicate 
machinery constantly needs repair, and crews to 
man the submarines are increasingly difficult to 
obtain. We are experiencing a similar difficulty 
in America, where, despite the inexhaustible amount 
of raw man-power, men for the new destroyers com- 
ing out shortly are hard to get. 

The best opinion here is that such optimism as 



268 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

is displayed in the despatch above referred to will 
have a mischievous effect. If America accepted 
that dictum, it would certainly turn out to be the 
reverse of true. The submarine is not only not 
yet unbeaten, but can be defeated only by the most 
strenuous sort of effort, with America and England 
working shoulder to shoulder. 

The men who have been sent here to study the 
subject and cooperate with England are doing fine 
work to that end. They bring the American point 
of view to London and impress it on the British, 
and they will take home a full understanding of the 
most important single subject of the war, and will 
be prepared to enlighten Washington's efforts. 
None of those making this study minimizes the 
seriousness of the situation or attaches more than 
casual insignificance to one week's figures. I can 
state as the general impression of many experts that 
if England and America stick right to it strenuously 
and sleeplessly, and a fair average of luck attends 
their efforts, we shall put the submarine danger be- 
hind us about the middle of 1918. We must always 
reckon with the possibility of Germany's springing 
some kind of surprise, but there has been oppor- 
tunity to take the measure of the new submarine 
cruiser, the forerunner of the craft which Berlin 
intimated was to be let loose on the high seas in 
great number as successors to the Seeadlers and 
Moewes. One of these craft has been actually 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 269 

cruising for sixty days on the high Atlantic, and 
its entire bag totals five ships, two of them small 
Brazilians. They cannot duplicate the Seeadler's 
feats, because they cannot have both a large cruising 
radius and speed, and as the designers considered 
the cruising radius primarily essential, the sub- 
marine sent out as a demonstrator found the sea 
too big for good hunting at slow speed. 

The Germans probably keep closer to realities 
in the submarine campaign than we do. They are 
undoubtedly having much difficulty in sustaining 
their activities. They are aware that Italy and 
Russia cannot save them if their submarine power 
is broken. Thej^ know that in eight or ten months 
the Allies' building programme of airplanes, de- 
stroyers, and cargo-ships will put the submarines 
out of business as a determining factor. Hence 
their activity on all fronts, and especially the present 
desperate effort to win the war game by taking the 
ball round the end in Italy. 

September 9. London is packed and jammed 
with people. No such crowds have ever been seen 
here before. In business hom-s I think that Oxford 
Street, between Oxford Circus and the Marble 
Arch, shows the greatest congestion. At night and 
on holidays the press of humanity centers in the 
Strand between Trafalgar Square and the law 
courts. In this latter region the soldiers fore- 



270 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

gather. Frequently each laddie has his lassie. 
The Strand is often so crowded that the pedestrian 
traffic overflows to the roadway. 

One interesting feature of the crowd is the great 
number of women carrying babies, usually very 
small ones. It seems to me that I can notice a 
different expression from what the young mother 
used to wear when seen carrjdng a child in public. 
Instead of looking gloomy or depressed, she seems 
radiant. This is a change which, if it has actually 
taken place on a sufficient scale to authorize gen- 
eralization, must be attributable in some subtle way 
to the psychology of the war. 

London, September 17. In France, where one 
comes into contact with the army chiefly, an im- 
pression lodges in the mind that this war might be 
brought to an end if only the Allied navies would 
"go to it." In London the atmosphere is distinctly 
naval. I did not get a chance to advance the char- 
acteristic land-lubber point of view more than about 
a minute before the argument was taken up in vig- 
orous sailorman fashion. "Why don't the English 
and American ships go in and clean them up? If 
success or failure right now hinges on the U-boat, 
why not send naval forces to batter to bits the bases 
on the channel coast? Expensive, yes, but what 
are ships for but to be risked and lost?" 

The counter-attack was so sudden and sharp that 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY '211 

I am afraid I i)ut rather more of the onus upon 
the absent army critic than was altogether fair, 
whereat a navy man who does n't think meanly of 
his own literary accomplishments undertook to pre- 
pare for my signature a letter stating the case in 
such simple terms as would leave no room for mis- 
understanding, and here is what he wrote : 

Since my return from Switzerland a few weeks ago I have 
been looking into the submarine situation again. You may 
have seen in "The Times" some of my articles concerning the 
present shipping situation, which is, as you doubtless know, 
still so serious that no effort should be spared to diminish the 
loss and increase the amount of tonnage. 

I intend to pound away at this until its significance is more 
generally understood in America, where the political speeches 
of Mr. Lloyd George tend to create a dangerous optimism. 

In the meantime there is another feature of this business 
which exercises no inconsiderable influence upon public opin- 
ion, and that is the influence of the inevitable mob strategy, 
which manifests itself in all cases of prolonged and serious 
war operations. 

Few persons refrain from expressing opinions as to how 
the enemy could be routed. All respectable newspaper ed- 
itors must supply their readers with such opinions, and with 
criticism of the responsible military leaders. 

Many suggestions as to how to end the war are published, 
and thousands are submitted to the authorities. These are 
variations of schemes indicated by various catch-phrases. Of 
these Winston Churchill's "Digging the rats out of their holes" 
is the chief. Another very seductive one is, "Why not stop 
up the hole in the nest instead of chasing the wasps after they 
are out?" 



272 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

The influence of these and similar phrases is such tliat even 
educated men do not hesitate to criticize the strategy, and 
even the common sense and courage, of the Allies, and as this 
tends to diminish efforts already under way, I made up my 
mind to obtain some facts and authoritative opinions on the 
subject. These have proved so very illuminating and are so 
readily comprehended, even by the civilian mind, that I am 
sure that they will interest you. 

1. — In order to "dig the rats out" or "stop up the hole in 
the wasp's nest," the German bases of their fleet and sub- 
marines must be taken by attack from the sea. 

2. — This can be done only by reducing by bombardment the 
fortifications that protect the bases. 

3. — The guns of modern land defenses are not visible from 
the sea. Many of them are powerful mortars at the bottom 
of pits. Ships, of course, are clearly visible from shore bat- 
teries and their captive balloons and airplanes. 

4. — The effective range of these guns is over twenty-three 
miles. This has been shown by actual shooting at ships in 
this war. 

5. — No man-of-war's gun has a range of more than seven- 
teen miles, and the enemy target is invisible. 

6. — It is therefore apparent that a naval attack from the 
sea would be even more suicidal now than in Nelson's day. 

7. — It might be compared to a blind pugilist with arms two 
feet long, trying to fight one with good eyesight and with arras 
three feet long. 

8. — Coast positions, large areas (like Bruges and Zee- 
brugge), are bombarded from time to time; but this can be 
done only at very infrequent intervals when the wind is in the 
right direction for screens to be laid to mask the bombarding 
vessels. 

9. — Few civilians know the above facts, which have been 
developed during this war, but I have yet to meet a single 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 273 

responsible officer who believes that it is possible to reduce 
land defenses by a sea attack. All competent naval historians 
express the same opinion. 

10. — But even assuming that this vrere possible, a glance 
at the map .will show that the German fleet and submarine 
bases could not be approached by shipping unless the powerful 
defenses of Heligoland were destroyed and the island captured 
and held, 

11. — But even assuming that this island were turned over 
to the Allies with all its defenses intact, it would not be held 
as a base by them, because, being only a few miles from the 
German bases, it could be attacked every night and all night 
by numerous airplanes carrying bombs of over two hundred 
pounds. Heligoland is one mile long by one-half mile wide. 

12. — There is practically no defense against such night 
raids. In the recent midnight raid on London only two of 
the numerous anti-aircraft guns even saw the planes. 

13. — Moreover, the island could be successfully bombed by 
daylight, because the Allies could not bring to bear enough 
fighting-planes to resist the .overwhelmingly greater number 
that could be sent from the near-by German bases to protect 
the bombing-planes. 

14. — There has been a recent naval conference in London 
in which all the principal Allied countries were represented. 
Their conclusions have not been published, but there can be no 
doubt that no member present believed that "the rats could be 
dug out of their holes." 

15. — Many schemes have been proposed for building a mine 
or net barrage, or both, to prevent the German submarines 
from coming out of or going into their bases. Many attempts 
have been made, but up to the present time it has not been 
found possible to prevent submarines from passing through 
the narrow strip of water between Calais and Dover, yet it 
has seriously been proposed by all sorts and conditions of 



274 FLASHES FROINI THE FRONT 

people to build a barrage from Scotland to Norwa}'^, over a 
distance of about 230 miles, in very deep water and across a 
strong tide. 

It is, of course, unnecessary to state that the assumptions of 
sufficient knowledge to decide how the naval war should be 
conducted on this side presuppose a condition of mind that I 
cannot well understand. The Allied nations have been fight- 
ing three years for their very existence. When the civilian 
sees that his particular task of the strategy of the situation 
has not been carried out, ought he not naturally to assume 
that there must be impelling reasons why this is so? 

But the civilian critic makes the opposite assumption. He 
is absolutely convinced that his ideas are right. They could 
be right only on the assumption, that the combined military 
experience of all the Allies was not sufficient to comprehend 
what seems so apparent to him, or else that seeing the situa- 
tion as he does, they lack the energy and courage to carry out 
the appropriate measures. No other condition would appear 
possible to a man who knows anything about history. 

In view of the divergence of opinion between the 
two services, to say notliing of the irrepressible con- 
flict of theory within the navy, the foregoing state- 
ment of the ideas upon which present poUcy is 
grounded should be interesting. 

The other day I had a chance for personal obser- 
vation of the wave of domestic economy sweeping 
over England. I went with Lord Northcliffe to 
see the lord chief -justice bid adieu to the bench and 
bar. On the way we were to stop at the North- 
cliffe home, and instead of going to St. James's 
Place, as of old, the driver was told to go to Number 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 275 

8, Buckingham Street. We passed in front of 
Buckingham Palace turning to the left near the 
Hotel Rubens, and then left again into a street that 
was more alley than street. We drew up in front 
of a row of small tenement houses, and Lord North- 
cliffe got out, saying, "This is my home, and the 
next door but one is Lord Lytton's." I was ex- 
tremely interested and went inside to see more of 
this change of state as compared with St. James's 
Place. 

On the first floor there was a room about eighteen 
feet square, which was the dining-room, furnished 
neatly and plainly; in the rear was a "den," and 
then a largish hall with a stairway. The house 
fronts about twenty-five feet and has three stories. 
I should say that a hundred dollars a month would 
be pretty stiff rent for it. 

"What did you do with the fine house in St. 
James's Place?" I asked. 

"We let it to a man who had spent five million 
dollars building a magnificent house. It was too 
expensive to maintain in war-time, so the owner 
closed it up and came down to what he regarded 
as contraction and economj^ in St. James's Place. 
We, in turn, moved to this little house, displacing 
people who find a flat good enough, and their pred- 
ecessors in the flat doubtless occupy lodgings. We 
keep three servants here when we can get them. 
With the money saved by hving in Buckingham 



276 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Street instead of St. James's Place, Lady North- 
cliffe is able to keep and support a hospital of her 
own. So, far from finding it a deprivation, my 
wife and I like it. It is less trouble, and there are 
fewer complications." 

December 31. Private control of railroads in 
England is a thing of the past. Government con- 
trol was adopted as a war measure in August, 1914. 
It has worked so well that the principle will be re- 
tained when peace returns. So much is certain. 
Wlien the war broke out, the Government had to 
get immediate control of the carriers in order fully 
to command facilities for transporting troops, arms, 
and supplies. There was not time for elaborating 
a plan, so the roads were just taken over in the 
simplest way. 

The net earnings of the previous year (1913) 
were guaranteed, with certain minor deductions, for 
the whole period of government control, and the 
ten general managers of the larger systems were 
constituted an executive committee with entire 
managerial charge. 

The whole scheme falls under the department of 
commerce and transportation, known here as the 
Board of Trade; but that body names a member 
of the committee of ten — Sir Herbert Walker — as 
its representative, holding for itself only reserve 
powers of control. 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 277 

When the new order set up in the hurry and con- 
fusion of that fateful August shook down to some- 
thing hke permanency, the managers were sur- 
prised to find what a good arrangement it was. 
Now, after well over two years of trying out, there 
is a practical unanimity in the opinion that the old 
conditions will never be entirely restored. 

Those railroad heads in America who do not need 
Dr. Vanderlip's prescription for hardened arteries 
and who, like the doctor himself, are ever scanning 
far horizons for signs of the times, have been watch- 
ing the experience of England for such light as it 
may throw upon the serious problems which con- 
front the carriers on that side of the Atlantic. 

It happens that there is one man in the railroad 
service in this country who can speak comparatively 
and with authority of railroads in America and in 
England. He is the general manager of the Great 
Eastern, Henry W. Thornton, a product of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad school, and, before coming 
here two and a half years ago, for some time general 
superintendent of the Long Island Railroad. As 
general manager of the Great Eastern his position 
corresponds to that of a railway president in Amer- 
ica, his responsibility being directly to the board of 
directors. 

Mr. Thornton is one of the Executive Committee 
operating the roads, each member of which has the 
military rank of lieutenant-colonel. I may add 



278 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

that Colonel Thornton has won the regard and 
confidence not only of the Great Eastern interests, 
but of the British public. He brings with him the 
American push and go, but fits into his new environ- 
ment as if to the mamier born. 

"The arrangement between the Government and 
the railroad companies," said Mr. Thornton, in re- 
ply to my inquiries, "has proved a good bargain for 
everybody. Under it stockholders receive the same 
return, with some minor deductions, that they had 
in 1913, upon which year the bargain was based. 
The Govermiient in turn fares well, because the 
hauling done for it, if it had been paid for at the 
regular rates, would have amounted to a great deal 
more than the difference between the present earn- 
ings and what it costs to run the railroads and pay 
the stockholders." 

"Will the old condition ever be restored?" 
"Never," replied Mr. Thornton, with emphasis. 
*'The position will be different after the war, but 
exactly what it will be nobody can tell. It will 
probably be something like semi-nationalization or 
government partnership. I do not think that either 
railroad shareholders or the Government need be 
anxious about the future condition. It will be 
better than the old relation, because we have had 
an opportunity to develop the subject under con- 
ditions which were peculiarly favorable to this pur- 
pose. We ought to work out something that has 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 279 

all the advantages and none of the disadvantages 
of government ownership." 

When asked to comment on the situation in 
America, Mr. Thornton said that, disregarding the 
position in England, and looking at it only as ap- 
plicable to the United States, the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission seemed to him to labor under 
the disadvantage that it was too far away from its 
subject. It was like a judge on the bench: it did 
not share in the consequences of its acts; its re- 
sponsibility was an academic one. 

The railroad interest, according to Mr. Thornton, 
divides itself into four distinct parts. 

1. — The interest of the shippers. 

2. — The railway staff, including labor and all 
employees. 

3. — The proprietors, including the shareholders 
and bondholders, and the general financing. 

4. — The Government, which in Europe already 
has, and in America will come to have, a military 
interest. 

The various interests are diverse and often in 
sharp opposition. The shippers always want low 
rates and care nothing about the other interests; 
the shareholders look to dividends; the employees 
want more wages, and do not worry themselves 
about the other points of view; the Government 
had a many-sided interest, which may be one thing 
to-day and quite another thing to-morrow. Its 



280 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

main interest, of course, is to represent the general 
public, from, which all railway revenue must be de- 
rived. 

"The problem is to bring all these factors to- 
gether," said Mr. Thornton, "so that they will ap- 
preciate the different points of view instead of al- 
ways standing each for its own. My study of the 
American problem has carried me almost to the 
conviction that instead of the Interstate Commerce 
Commission there should be a body composed of 
men representing the four interests to which I have 
referred. 

"It might be well to carry the scheme even nearer 
to government control. Assummg some form of 
financial participation on the part of the Govern- 
ment, there is at once a stabihzing of railway se- 
curities. They are taken out of the field of spec- 
ulation. The raising of capital becomes easy and 
its hire cheap. The Goverimient has then a stake 
in the proposition. Moreover, each of the interests 
involved watches the other, and sees that no interest 
gets more than its share." 

"What about the general pubhc in this scheme 
of control and management?" Mr. Thornton was 
asked. 

"The public is represented by the Government, 
and that ought to be adequate in a democracy. 
What I have outlined in the way of a possible 
solution of the railway problem in America may 



GREAT BRITAIN AT BAY 281 

not jfit when laid down on the ground, but it seems 
to me that you have got to devise some scheme 
of automatic justice in a railway management, or 
else you will have a breakdown somewhere that 
will be very serious in its effects on the whole 
country. 

"Our problem in England is much easier, be- 
cause it is simpler here than it is in America to con- 
centrate authority. I have no doubt that if the 
reorganization of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission were attempted, there would be a general 
demand to have local bodies with subordinate au- 
thority in the various sections. That would have 
its advantages, but it would interfere with concen- 
tration of authority and ease of control. 

"The big thing, it seems to me, is that the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission should have a real and 
practical interest in the administration. For ex- 
ample, in the labor fight recently neither the Pres- 
ident nor Congress was directly interested in what 
happened after the settlement was secured; what 
they wanted was to get from under the difficulty. 
A continuing body, charged with permanent re- 
sponsibility, would have an entirely different out- 
look on the question. 

"A body composed of the best available men, 
appointed for life and adequatelj^ paid, would be 
in a position to get the best results. For example, 
a labor leader (and there are many good ones in 



282 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

America) might go into this body prejudiced, but 
his association with the others would broaden and 
mellow him. Precisely the same thing could be said 
of the representative of capital. 

"It has worked that way in England. Never 
anywhere has there existed such severe competition 
as there was here among the railroads, and yet the 
ten general managers, when brought together to 
operate the railroads of England, have all come 
to see one another's point of view, and as a matter 
of practical experience, every decision reached by 
them has been unanimous." 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE 

Paris, February 27. The article entitled "The 
Battle of 1917," which appears in "Collier's" of 
January 5, just received in France, purporting to 
give a true account of General Nivelle's offensive 
on April 16, 1917, may cause considerable mischief 
unless corrected. Aside from the injustice to the 
Ribot Ministry, and M. Painleve in particular, 
against which M. Painleve has already entered his 
protest, the article puts the French Government in 
a false position. 

The main contention of the writer is that the 
French Government stopped the whole offensive, 
despite the British Government, because of a panic 
into which members of the French parliament pres- 
ent at the Chemin des Dames on April 16 and see- 
ing war slaughter for the first time in their lives 
were thrown. Collier's story says that these pol- 
iticians returned to Paris that night, and that their 
alarmist pressure subsequently induced Painleve, 
then minister of war, to call off the offensive move- 
ment when the Germans were about to retreat to the 

Meuse. 

283 



284 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

I have investigated this statement carefully and 
found it untrue. With the collapse of this claim, 
the whole structure of the story falls to the ground. 
The main contention being disproved, the rest of 
the article becomes mere gossip, some of it having 
elements of truth, but much of it imaginary and 
inaccurate. 

The only excuse for going back to Nivelle's 
offensive would be the righting of some wrong so 
great that, if unrighted, it would interfere with 
Allied success. As the Paris government did not 
order the Nivelle offensive stopped, no such wrong 
could have been committed. The discussion is, 
therefore, purely a discussion of why Nivelle failed, 
and is simply raking over the dead embers of the 
past without good purpose and, indeed, with very 
pernicious possibilities. 

If Nivelle or his friends have permitted disap- 
pointment and chagi'in to drive him into fomenting 
a controversy, that fact brings new justification of 
the action of the French Government when for the 
best of reasons it removed him from command as 
not being a big enough man for the job. The 
greatest opportunity which any general has had 
in this war was given to him. He asked for power 
to organize and execute a tremendous attaque 
brusque as a climax and finale of all the secondary 
and preparatory movements. That power he re- 
ceived. He had the limit prescribed by himself. 



THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE 285 

His offensive failed. There was no order from 
Paris that it should be stopped. It was stopped by- 
its own failure. 

Various elements that enter into this failure could 
be the subject of interesting discussion, but once 
it is admitted, as it must be, that the war office did 
not interfere, the matter loses all color of scandal, 
and discussion can proceed in an entirely different 
vein. If Nivelle's generals were doubtful of the 
soundness of his plans, he cannot blame others for 
it. Actually, he set out on a path that only a 
genius might dare to tread, and fell. The effort 
to shift its blame to other shoulders cannot be made 
good. 

In the appended parallel columns I have con- 
trasted the facts with various statements made in 
the article in "Colher's." 

First column gives statements made in "Col- 
lier's"; the second column gives the facts of the 
case. 



1 . This ofFensive was really 
a great French victory. 



2. On Jan. 15, 1917, there 
was an allied council in 



1. It was not a great 
victory, but a succes d'es- 
time, creditable to the courage 
of the French soldiers, but 
costing dear in men, and it 
fell far short of the ambitious 
hopes with which the plan of 
operations was conceived. 

2, This is the initial gross 
error by which the value of 



286 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 



London^ attended by Lloyd 
George, Bonar Law, Generals 
Haig and Nivelle, Premier 
Ribot, and the French War 
Minister, M. Painleve. 



S. (Missing from the cable 
dispatch, supplied from the 
published article.) Follow- 
ing is his (Nivelle's) plan: 
The chief French attack . . . 
was shifted to the Valley of 
the Aisne over east of Sois- 
isons. . . . While this front 
was, therefore, to be the chief 
French offensive sector, the 
other main point of the battle 
was to be conducted far to the 
north by the English troops 
before Lens and stretching 
down to Arras. 

There was to be a second- 
ary English attack before 
Bapaume; further to the 
south, and just below that, a 
secondary French attack was 
planned, under General 



the wliole story can be meas- 
ured. At that time M. Ribot 
was not premier, but M. Bri- 
and. M. Painleve was not 
even a member of the French 
Government. M. Lyautey 
was war minister. M. Pain- 
leve only became war minister 
on March 20. M. Painleve 
did not enter the Briand gov- 
ernment of December, 1916, 
because his views on military 
questions were different. 

3. The important point is 
that Nivelle's Aisne attack 
was a definite, deliberate at- 
tempt to break the German 
lines. He was trying to re- 
peat on a seventy-five-mile 
front — at a point where the 
broken nature of the ground 
rendered the German posi- 
tions exceptionally strong — 
what had been done on a six- 
mile front at Verdun. He 
proposed to burst right 
through, capture the German 
heavy artillery, and fight an 
open battle. According to 
the plan, the French cavalry 
ought to be at Laon on the 
evening of the first day and 
the infantry reach the line of 
the Oise — a forty-mile ad- 



THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE 287 



Franchet d'Esperey, between 
Roye and the Oise. Thus it 
is easy to follow the gigantic 
conception of this battle. It 
was to be so big it could 
never be known by a single 
name. In fact, it was called 
by Nivelle "The Battle of 
1917." It was to be the 
battle of decision that would 
end the war. 

Far north the hammer was 
to strike first. The English 
were to lead ofF; then the 
secondary blows, both English 
and French, were to follow on 
succeeding days, with the last 
move to be made by the main 
French forces in the east. It 
was the belief of Haig and 
Nivelle that by these great 
converging attacks the centre 
of the German line must re- 
tire. But the conception of 
Nivelle was even bigger than 
all this, for it included a third 
phase of the English attack, 
which was to spread further 
north into Flanders. This 
actually did happen — but 
three months late. 



vance — on the fourth day. 
The success of the operation 
depended on the violence and 
rapidity of the attack. If the 
rupture was not obtained in 
twenty-four, or at most forty- 
eight hours, the attack was to 
be abandoned as involving 
heavy losses without useful 
results. Such was Nivelle's 
plan. If this rupture of- 
fensive did not succeed, it 
ought, according to General 
Nivelle, to be abandoned at 
the end of the second day. 
The grand attack failed and 
was spontaneously abandoned 
— through sheer impossibility 
to continue it — by Nivelle 
himself on April 18. 

Another important point is 
that in the original plan one 
of the essential conditions for 
the success of the rupture of- 
fensive had been simultane- 
ous attacks by the Russian 
and Italian armies. This 
condition was not fulfilled. 
On the contrary, the Germans 
brought troops from Russia 
until at the moment the battle 
began they had one hundred 
and fifty-three divisions in 
line, thirty more than at the 



288 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 



4. Why did not these two 
French armies pierce and 
even smash the German line? 
The answer to the question is 
this: By nightfall of April 
16 the French armies were 
no longer under military 
authority, but were in a do- 
main purely political. 



battle of the Somme. Thus 
Nivelle's plan from the out- 
set was facing circumstances 
which diminished the chance 
of success. 

4. The French armies did 
not pierce the German line for 
the following reasons: 

A. — It was impossible to 
concentrate sufficient artillery 
on such a wide front to insure 
adequate destruction of the 
defense system. 

B. — Broken ground, nu- 
merous steep ravines, deep 
grottos, and masked clumps 
of trees afforded ideal shelter 
for the German gun and mi- 
trailleuse positions. 

C. — Lack of dominant "ob- 
servatories" on the French 
side made it necessary to de- 
pend solely on airplanes for 
artillery observation, and the 
bad weather which prevailed 
at the time of the attack 
rendered what chance of 
success the effort might have 
had infinitely smaller. 

D. As M. Herve stated 
in "La Victoire" of April 5, 
the Germans captured a non- 
commissioned officer near 
Sapigneul and they found on 



THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE 289 



5. Over a dozen members 
of the French Senate and 
Chamber of Deputies . . . 
came out from Paris to take 
in the spectacle of the attack. 
. . . But I do know that by 
nightfall, as a result of what 
they saw for the first time in 
their lives — a real battle of 
blood and steel — they were 
all in a mad panic. Through- 
out the day they had fran- 



him a detailed plan for the 
attack of the French right 
north of Rheims. 

Nevertheless Nivelle did 
not modify his plans in this 
sector, and the Germans, 
knowing the French scheme, 
were able to take counter- 
measures and concentrate a 
disastrous cross-fire on the 
advancing troops. In fact, 
through this incident, the 
French were here led into a 
regular death-trap. The at- 
tack before Craonne and the 
Chemin des Dames began at 
6 A. M. By 7:30 it was al- 
ready clear that success was 
impossible. The attack was 
not stopped by political inter- 
ferences, but by its own 
failure. 

5. The party included M. 
Clemenceau, the present 
prime minister, whose cour- 
age and coolness at the 
front are notorious. They 
were in an observation post 
near Juvincourt, and the 
comparatively little they saw 
of the battle appeared to 
be progressing satisfactorily. 
They had no panic. None 
of them telephoned to Paris 



290 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 



tically telephoned to the Gov- 
ernment in Paris that the 
French armies were being 
slauglitered and demanded 
that the offensive just under 
way be ordered stopped. 



6. The offensive did not 
actually cease at once, but 
from that first day it was so 
hampered by political inter- 
ference that it could never 
again get into its stride. 
Yet, despite the German 
order to resist to the death 
in the first line, the French 
had by nightfall that first day 
taken the first and second 
German lines. 



during the day. The only 
ones who returned feeling 
anxious were those Avho saw 
Nivelle's face that evening 
and drew ominous conclu- 
sions from it. No pressure 
was exerted on the Paris 
government, and there was 
no order from Paris to stop 
the offensive. 

6. According to Nivelle's 
own plan, the offensive must 
succeed in the first day or 
not at all. According to 
the program, the cavalry 
should have reached Laon the 
first evening, but no rupture 
took place — the attaque 
brusque had failed. The 
question of political inter- 
ference never even arose, be- 
cause it was obvious by the 
first night that the rupture 
was impossible. The attack 
was stopped in the sense that 
a man is stopped when he 
charges a concrete wall. 
The French did not take the 
first and second German lines. 
Along two-thirds of the front 
of attack they took only the 
first line, demolished by artil- 
lery preparation, and were 
checked by the German fire 



THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE 291 



7. [Missing; apparently 
elided by censor.] 

8. [Missing; apparently 
elided by censor.] 

9. These figures (of the 
losses) were 54,000 wounded 
and 15,000 dead for the en- 
tire period of nine days from 
the beginning of the attack. 
. . . These heads of the 
French Nation went back to 
their argument for stopping 
the offensive to the figures of 
Godart — 95,000 wounded and 
25,000 dead, an exaggeration 
of over 70 per cent. 



from the second line, the 
strength of which had been 
little impaired. To continue 
the attack would have been 
nothing short of suicidal. 
On April 17 the "offensive of 
rupture" conceived by Gen- 
eral Nivelle was stopped 
deliberately by himself. 
Henceforth he could not 
hope to try operations the 
object of which was to break 
the German line. That plan 
was abandoned in favor of the 
local operations of the usual 
offensive, and the dream of 
breaking through to the 
Meuse had vanished. 

7. [Missing; apparently 
elided by censor.] 

8. [Missing; apparently 
elided by censor.] 

9. This was all thrashed 
out before Parliamentary 
committees and in secret ses- 
sions of the Chamber and 
Senate, where M. Painleve 
won almost unanimous ap- 
probation, Tlie proceedings 
are a matter of record, and 
will be publislied after the 
war. Sufiice it to say that 
the official figures were not 
underestimated. Regarding 



292 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 



10. [Missing; apparently 
elided by censor.] 

11. On April 29, Paul 
Painleve, minister of war, 
sent a telegram to General 
Nivelle, ordering that the en- 
tire offensive be immediately 
stopped. 



12. It is now a matter 
of definite knowledge — and 



the killed, the author of the 
article only reread the docu- 
ments and reports that have 
been indiscreetly shown him. 
He will see that there has 
been cunningly hidden from 
him [apparent elision by cen- 
sor] out of the column of 
"missing," the total of which 
was out of proportion to the 
small number of prisoners. 

10. [Missing; apparently 
elided by censor.] 

11. No such telegram was 
sent. So far from stopping 
the offensive action, the facts 
on record show that on April 
30 began the brilliant attacks 
of Mont Moronvilliers and 
Mont Cornillet, which con- 
tinued successfully for six 
days. On May 4 began the 
attacks on Craonne and the 
Chemin des Dames, which 
also lasted six days and won 
for France Craonne and a 
great part of the Chemin des 
Dames along an eighteen- 
mile front. No order was re- 
quired or given to stop the 
attempt at rupture, as it had 
already failed. 

12. This assertion is pure 
fantasy. There is not the 




:■ ^r ;'>\ 



^"^^ '■ 



CAPTAIN GUYNEMER 



THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE 293 



proof — that on that day the 
German general army order 
was to prepare immediately 
for a quick retreat to the line 
of tlie River Meuse. 

13. Lloyd George created 
what may be called a scene 
in his remarks to the French 
Government. 



14. Before this April 16 
offensive began^ the Minister 
of War invited nearly all 
French group commanders to 
Paris to discuss and criticise 
the plans of offensive. 



15, The Minister of War 
sent the telegram to Nivelle 
ordering the offensive to cease 
after Haig and England had 



least ground for supposing or 
suggesting anything of the 
kini 



13. Nothing of the kind oc- 
curred. This conference was 
indispensable for the pur- 
pose of readjusting plans, in 
view of the failure of Ni- 
velle's attempt at rupture. 

14. An ingenious perver- 
sion of the truth! At the 
moment of assuming office on 
March 20, M. Painleve nat- 
urally consulted the French 
war chiefs — Nivelle first of 
all — with regard to the plans 
formulated during the min- 
istry of his predecessor, 
Lyautey. Not to do so would 
have been a gross dereliction 
of duty on the part of the 
new minister. The differ- 
ences of opinion between 
Nivelle and the Generals 
commanding groups were al- 
ready known to insiders be- 
fore M. Painleve's accession 
to the ministry of war. 

15. No such order was ever 
given, and the offensive did 
not cease at all. 



294 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 



been assured that it would 
be continued. 

16. The Minister of War 
stated in public session of the 
Chamber of Deputies of July 
7 that "henceforth the French 
armies would seek only lim- 
ited objectives" . . . and so, 
it is charged, he thus gave 
public and official notice to 
Germany that from that date 
she need fear nothing of im- 
portance from France. 



17. When Paris papers of 



16. Reference to the min- 
ister's speech kills this state- 
ment. M. Painleve did say 
there would be no more wild 
and costly attempts to break 
the German line. He did say 
that General Petain was a 
wise and prudent commander. 
His declaration was that 
henceforth the activity of the 
French armies under Petain 
would be as energetic as 
possible, and directed by 
methods that would be sure 
to be fruitful and sparing of 
human lives. Results justify 
his assertion, notably the re- 
pulse of the German attack 
on the Chemin des Dames in 
July, the successful partici- 
pation in the British opera- 
tions in the Flanders victory, 
the operations at Verdun in 
August, which retook the fa- 
mous Mort Homme and Hill 
304, and, lastly, the splendid 
success on the Aisne Canal 
in October, where the total 
losses in killed, wounded, and 
missing were inferior to those 
of April 18. 

17. The public can judge 



THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE 295 



April 18 reached Berlin, the 
Germans discovered, to their 
amazement, that panic existed 
in France. 



18. The conclusions (of 
the court-martial) were favor- 
able to Generals Nivelle and 
Mangin. 



by the facts the exactness of 
the writer's assertions. It is 
enough to read, no matter 
what French paper you see, 
that the operations were 
everywhere regarded until 
the end of April as a brilliant 
victory. One could offer a 
prize to any reader who would 
find any sign of panic in the 
French newspapers of this 
period. 

18. The military court did 
not wish to be hard on fel- 
low-soldiers, who had tried a 
big enterprise and failed, but 
the result of their inquiry was 
that Nivelle, instead of be- 
ing generalissimo, now holds 
a secondary post in Africa, 
and General Mangin, who in 
April commanded an army of 
four hundred and fifty thou- 
sand men, no longer com- 
mands any army. 



The following note from M. Paul Painleve, for- 
mer Prime Minister of France, was received by 
"The New York Times" by cable on February 4 
last and transmitted, as requested, to the editor of 
"Corner's": 



296 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

Paris, Feb. 3, 1918. 
To the Editor of "Collier's Weekly:" 

Having read your article about the 1917 offensive, pub- 
lished Jan. 5, I desire to make to you the most indignant 
protest. In it there is not one statement regarding me, 
there is not one figure, which is not contrary to the truth. 
When it will be possible for me to give a public explanation 
I will prove by official documents the vast gulf which sepa- 
rates the real facts from the monstrous legend which your 
misplaced confidence has accepted. I count now on your 
sense of honor to publish this protest. 

Paul Painleve. 



CHAPTER XVII 

IN CONCLUSION 

This war is an enormous business. It needs to 
be studied as ordinary big businesses are. Henry- 
Ford once told me that one of the problems in the 
Detroit factory to which he gave a large share of 
his personal attention was that of individualized ca- 
pacity. He had a pretty theory which, as stated 
by him, lodged in my mind and stayed there, that 
every man was peculiarly fitted for some given 
task. His job as an employer was to find what a 
man could do and get the doing out of him. Men 
are not different from the lower animals. Instincts 
or abilities are specialized in each breed and even 
in the individual members of a breed. A bird-dog 
that performs ideally in the field would be a sad 
failure trying to herd sheep. 

If there were a score of Henry Fords studying 
the millions of men in the field and seeing to it that 
they were drawn out on the side of their bent, the 
Fords aforesaid would each and every one earn the 
money that the Detroit member of the family 
makes. Nowhere else is this problem quite so im- 
portant as in the air service. This service attracts 

297 



298 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

the venturing, but that process of selection is too 
rough to stop at ; there should be a second comb-out 
which would restore to other services all except 
those with true flying instinct. As the war takes 
on permanent form its processes are standardized. 
The air -man becomes more and more true to type, 
but there is still a haphazard mixture of big, strong 
infantrymen with the air forces, and high-strung, 
race-horse types in the trenches. The six-foot, two- 
hundred pounder, who as an infantry -man would, 
if lost, find his way home with a Boclie under each 
arm, perhaps lacks the nervous organization for 
quick perception and action. On the other hand, 
the sensitive, feminine-looking man, who could make 
his fifty record in the air, might die of nervous 
agony in the funk-holes and on the firing-step. 

Let me illustrate with Georges Guynemer. I 
have heard soldiers say that so far Guynemer is the 
greatest soldier of the war, perhaps of any war. I 
never saw him face to face, much to my regret. 
But I saw his performance on the fourth of July 
when he was flying in a car, chic in its new paint and 
gaudy in its French colors. He was cutting capers 
over the Place de la Concorde as the newly arrived 
American troops marched. It was a beautiful and 
historic sight. Look at the photograph of the boy 
who performed marvels in air-fighting. His girlish 
face, on which he was unable to raise a moustache, 
does n't at all suggest the soldier in the old sense, 



IN CONCLUSION 299 

"bearded like the pard." What if such genius had 
been sacrificed in the mud of trench warfare. And 
yet the like thing is being done every day through 
lack of that kind of knowledge which only long ex- 
perience and high expertness make possible. 

I have recently heard a story that sounds like 
fiction, but it came from a good source. Some 
people at Compiegne, the family home, told me that 
Guynemer was carefully examined when a lad 
for an abnormal heart, and the doctor found that 
that organ was singularly like a bird's. If there 
be such a thing as "bird-heart," it is a good disease 
for air -men to have. 

Paris, September 1, 1917. In to-day's paper the 
new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Kuehl- 
mann, is quoted as urging the Reichstag to study 
the "psycholog}^ of our enemies." In Switzerland 
I was told that this is a subject on every lip in 
Germany. When two or three people meet on a 
street corner in Berlin, if they are political Olym- 
pians, the talk is apt to drift that way. They dis- 
cuss it as "analytical psychology" and approach the 
subject as they would chemistry or physics. 

Of course the proper psychology has little of 
the analytical or intellectual in it. It is largely a 
matter of instinct. Most things of that sort in 
this life are felt rather than heard, seen, or thought 
out. We detect psychological considerations as 



300 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

cats in the dark detect things with their whiskers. 
We use something that corresponds to antennae a 
great deal more than we use our wits or our brains. 
Who would ever think of resorting to analysis to 
determine whether a certain person was a gentle- 
man? I might mention a hundred parallels. In 
two-thirds of all our activities we are with the cat 
in the use of our antennae. 

But the German is bare of this delicate hirsute 
mechanism. He is obliged to refer to the mind all 
those questions which with human beings — and cats 
— are answered almost subconsciously. Perhaps it 
is a vague sense of his own deficiency that has pro- 
voked the German into an absurd affectation on 
the subject. His helplessness in the field of psy- 
chology has led him into blunder after blunder in 
all his dealings with the world. I remember asking 
Ambassador Gerard why Germany always seemed 
so clumsy and gauche in these relations. He re- 
plied, "They overanalyze." 

Their psychology, however, is all right where only 
they themselves are concerned. Nobody there goes 
by feel. All through the trying times of the last 
three years the leaders, or bosses, have set out the 
food for the thought of the Germans precisely as 
if their minds were their stomachs. The kaiser, 
Bethmann, Hindenburg, and Ludendorfif have reg- 
ulated the whole matter by laborious prearrange- 
ment. The press is controlled with meticulous 



IN CONCLUSION 301 

care. A committee which, I understand, is com- 
posed of a navy man, an army man, and a civilian, 
meets daily and prescribes policy by the dose. 
There is also a large program, covering a month at 
a time, that is made up by the higher authorities. 

For example, it might have been decreed that in 
July the press should only soft-pedal on submarine 
sinkings, playing up instead the Russian collapse 
and assurance of future food supply through the 
conquest of Bessarabia. "Let 's keep the U-boat 
until August or September, when the public may 
stand in greater need of buoying up," might be the 
line of the policy laid down. They utilize every- 
thing in psychology, as in the recovery of fats from 
the gruesome offal of battle-fields. In the present 
Government Ivuehlmann is the high priest of the 
school of philosophy which I have here expounded. 
It may be remarked that his unctuously pious 
phrases have produced shouts of derision among his 
old associates in diplomacy in London and else- 
where. His choice of a role is quite the funniest 
incident in the whole opera bouffe performance of 
[Berlin diplomacy. 

From Munich come reports of acute reaction 
against Pan-Germanism. It is said that talk of 
prosecuting the war with a view of annexation, in- 
demnity, and world-conquest, if indulged in by any 
one, is bitterly resented. Prevailing opinion in 
Munich is for peace with a whole skin. In fact, 



302 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

even a slight loss of epidermis could be borne with 
patience in the Bavarian capital. 

It is said that the great university of democracy 
of Germany is in the trenches. All sources of in- 
formation agree as to the democratization of the 
German Army. When the common soldier is no 
longer in the strait- jacket of military discipline he 
is going to be a convinced antagonist of the brutal 
system of putting millions of men face to face with 
suffering and death through no wish of their own 
and for purposes which, as far as they understand, 
do not even remotely concern them. I have an 
echo of this idea in a letter from a clear-thinking 
American. 

It is a terrible discredit to the intelligence of this genera- 
tion that a war such as the present one must be continued at 
such cost. Still, I suppose it is necessary and must be con- 
tinued until each of the nations involved has put itself in 
such a position that it can speak effectively as a nation con- 
cerning its foreign relations. This, of course, is already 
possible in the United States, France, and England, and, I 
assume, in Italy. I fancy it would be a very simple matter 
to make it so in fact in Austria and Hungary, but apparently 
the German people as a nation still have no determining 
voice concerning their foreign policy. 

It seems strange, and is criminal, that a small group of 
people in a nation like Germany should be responsible for 
the continuation of the war, because, as I view the matter, 
if Germany should put itself in a position where the Gov- 
ernment was responsible to the Reichstag, there would be 
no real obstacle in the way of peace. Possibly, if that 



IN CONCLUSION 303 

matter could be brought home to the German people, it might 
help bring about an early understanding. In the meantime, 
of course, there is only one thing to do, and in the foot-ball 
parlance it is "to stoop low and hit the center hard," and 
that is what we are trying to do over here at the present 
time. I believe that every one feels that the harder we 
hit, the sooner will the war be over. 

I read the above paragraph to one of the best- 
informed men in Paris, and he said : 

"It is curious what a center shot your cor- 
respondent makes in quoting the foot-ball phrase. 
That is precisely what Haig is doing in Flanders, 
Petain at Verdun, and Cadorna around Trieste, 
stooping low and hitting the center hard. That is 
precisely what America should do. There is, no 
doubt, a particular center which would feel the im- 
pact of her blow, and she has a titanic striking 
power. If we hammer hard and all together we 
will make Germany reel." 

Paris, March 16. I have received inside in- 
formation calling renewed attention to the sub- 
marine situation. There has been too much op- 
timistic generalizing on this subject. I am urged 
by expert authorities to point out to America con- 
stantly how useless will be all her strength and how 
utterly hopeless all her plans for defeating Ger- 
many unless the submarine is mastered. And it 
is not mastered yet. For eight months I have been 
digging out, and by hook or crook getting censors 



304 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

to pass to America, tonnage figures on submarine 
sinkings. Public appreciation there of the serious- 
ness of this phase of the war has constituted a 
driving force to increase the effort in building de- 
stroyers and shipping. But twice as much tonnage 
was sunk in 1917 as was built. The year 1918 
therefore opened with an accumulated deficit. It 
is safe to say that if we had twice the tonnage actu- 
ally possessed by the Allies to-day we should still 
be far short of supplying Europe's needs and trans- 
porting the American army. 

All estimates about the future are vitiated by the 
element of speculation. After a year of sinking 
twice the tonnage that was constructed we are still 
losing more than we are building. Optimists 
sharpen their pencils and figure on a certainty of 
construction overtaking the destruction by next 
June, and then unexpectedly British labor develops 
some strange distemper that slows down results in 
the shipyards. I am reliably informed that the 
hours necessar}'- to produce a given unit have in- 
creased since the war in the proportion of eight to 
thirteen. There are so many possibilities in the 
submarine field that all estimates should have a 
liberal margin of safety. The Germans may up- 
set the present naval balance by transferring their 
[Baltic forces, released by the Russian collapse, to 
the North Sea and the Atlantic, thus crippling the 
convoy system and increasing the loss by subma- 



IN CONCLUSION 305 

rines. Or they may make their U-boats larger and 
more of them. The field of invention is as open to 
them as it is to us. 

The submarine situation should be opened up 
and dealt with frankly on both sides of the ocean. 
Much of the trouble now experienced in England 
with labor and war weariness is due to ill-advised 
concealment about the submarine. Democracies 
can fight best when they know the worst. Political 
coddling produces enfeeblement. For months 
London has been more concerned about stopping 
the air raids than beating the submarines. Remiss- 
ness with the Government is a more potent force 
than righteous indignation against Germany or the 
firm resolve to win at all hazards. In a word, we 
deny in practice the very principle of publicity that 
we are fighting this war to vindicate and establish. 

The leaders here who are bearing the burden of 
this war are anxious for America to understand 
and keep steadily in mind that, whatever may hap- 
pen in any arena, the submarine remains the bull's- 
eye at which allied effort must be aimed. As- 
suming that the western front can be held for the 
time being, as asserted by General Foch and other 
authorities, Germany can be defeated militarily, 
despite her eastern conquests, by swift and effective 
measures against the submarine. Germany's 
strategy is conceived with a view to diverting pop- 
ular interest to other and comparatively irrelevant 



306 FLASHES FROM THE FRONT 

matters, like air raiding, while the silent U-boats 
cut the allied jugular. With the western line hold- 
ing intact, the problem chiefly is one of sustaining 
the life of the European Allies and transporting an 
American army strong enough to deal the death- 
blow to Prussia. The extent to which America is 
relied on for the extinction of the submarine may 
be judged from the expectation generally enter- 
tained that the United States from now on will con- 
tribute nearly three-fourths of the new construction. 
Until now preliminary preparations have largely 
absorbed American effort, but henceforth shipping 
is expected in such quantity from the American 
yards as to restore normal conditions within six 
months, and assured transport thereafter. 



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Oeacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: JUfJ 2fflfi 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IM PAPER PRESERVATION 

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Cranberry Township. PA 16066 

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